
Glass 


• 


Book 


... 


G P 





May 1, 1845, 



A LIST OF BOOKS 



RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY 



EDWARD MOXON, 44 ; DOVER STREET. 



DRAMATIC LIBRARY. 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. With an 

INTRODUCTION. By George Darley. In two volumes, 8vo, 
with Portraits and Vignettes, price 32s. cloth. 

ii. 

SHAKSPEARE. With REMARKS on his LIFE 

and WRITINGS. By Thomas Campbell. In one volume, 
8vo, with Portrait, Vignette, and Index, price 16s. cloth. 

in. 

BEN JONSON. With a MEMOIR. By William 

Gifford. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait and Vignette, 
price 16s. cloth. 

IV. 

MASSINGER AND FORD. With an INTRO- 

DTJCTION. By Hartley Coleridge. In one volume, 8vo, with 
Portrait and Vignette, price 16s. cloth. 



W T YCHERLEY, CONGREVE, VANBRUGH, 

AND FARQUHAR. With BIOGRAPHICAL and CRITICAL 
NOTICES. By Leigh Hunt. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait 
and Vignette, price 16s. cloth. 

VI. 

SHERIDAN'S DRAMATIC WORKS. With 

a BIOGRAPHICAL and CRITICAL SKETCH. By Leigh 
Hunt. Price 5s. 6d. cloth. 



A LIST OF BOOKS 



ROGERS'S POEMS, 



ROGERS'S POEMS. A New Edition. In one 

volume, illustrated by 72 Vignettes, from designs by Turner 
and Stothard, price 16*. boards. 



ROGERS'S ITALY. A New Edition. In one 

volume, illustrated by 56 Vignettes, from designs by Turner 
and Stothard, price 16*. boards. 



ROGERS'S POEMS; and ITALY. In two 

pocket volumes, illustrated by numerous Woodcuts, price 10*. 



WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. 



WORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS. In 

six volumes, price 30*. cloth. 



WORDSWORTH'S POEMS, chiefly of early and 

late Years, including " The Borderers," a Tragedy. In one 
volume, price 9*. cloth. 

in. 

WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS. In one Volume, 

price 6*. cloth. 

IV. 

WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION. A Poem. 

In one volume, price 6* cloth. 



SELECT PIECES from WORDSWORTH In 

one volume, illustrated by numerous Woodcuts, price 7*. 6d. 
boards. 8*. 6d. half-bound, morocco, gilt edges. ^ 



RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY EDWARD MOXON. 3 



CAMPBELL'S POEMS. 



CAMPBELL'S POETICAL WORKS. A New 

Edition. In one volume, illustrated by 20 Vignettes from 
designs by Turner, and 37 Woodcuts from designs by Harvey. 
Price 20s. boards. 



CAMPBELL'S POETICAL WORKS. In one 

pocket volume, illustrated by numerous Woodcuts, price 8s. 
cloth. 

in. 

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF CAMPBELL. 

Edited by Dr. William Beattie, one of his Executors. 
In the Press. 



SHELLEY'S WORKS. 

i. 
SHELLEY'S POETICAL WORKS. Edited by 

Mrs. Shelley. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait and Vignette, 
price 10s. Gd. cloth. 



SHELLEY'S ESSAYS and LETTERS FROM 

ABROAD. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. A New Edition. 
Price 5s. 



CHARLES LAMB'S WORKS. 



LAMB'S WORKS. A New Edition. In one 

volume, 8vo, with Portrait and Vignette, price Us. cloth. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. A New Edition. 

Price 5.? 



A LIST OF BOOKS 



D'XSRAELX'S WORKS. 



CURIOSITIES of LITERATURE. Thirteenth 

Edition. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait, Vignette, and 
Index, price 16s. cloth. 

ii. 

MISCELLANIES OF LITERATURE. In one 

volume, 8vo, with Vignette, price 14s. cloth. 
contents : — 

1. Literary Miscellanies. | 3. Calamities of Authors. 

2. Quarrels of Authors. | 4. The Literary Character, 

5. Character of James the First. 



DYCE'S BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
THE WORKS OF BEAUMONT AND 

FLETCHER ; the Text formed from a new collation of the 
early Editions. With Notes and a biographical Memoir. By 
the Rev. A. Dyce. In eleven volumes 8vo. Price 61. 12s. Od 
cloth. 



CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 



CHAUCER'S POETICAL WORKS. With an 

Essay on his Language and Versification, and an Introduc- 
tory Discourse ; together with Notes and a Glossary. By 
Thomas Tyrwhttt. In one volume, 8vo with Portrait and 
Vignette, price 16s. cloth. 



SPENSER'S WORKS. With a Memoir, Notes, 

and a Glossary. In one volume, 8vo. In the Press. 



RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY EDWARD MOXON. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



HAYDN'S DICTIONARY OF DATES, and 

UNIVERSAL REFERENCE, relating to all Ages and Nations ; 
comprehending every Remarkable Occurrence, Ancient and 
Modern — the Foundation, Laws, and Governments of Countries 
— their Progress in Civilisation, Industry, and Science — their 
Achievements in Arms ; the Political and Social Transactions 
of the British Empire — its Civil, Military, and Religious Institu- 
tions — the Origin and Advance of Human Arts and Inventions, 
with copious details of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The 
whole comprehending a body of information, Classical, Political, 
and Domestic, from the earliest accounts to the present time. 
Second Edition. In one volume, 8vo, price 18s. cloth. 



KNOWLES'S (JAMES) PRONOUNCING and 

EXPLANATORY DICTIONARY of the ENGLISH LAN- 
GUAGE. Founded on a correct development of the Nature, 
the Number, and the Various Properties of all its Simple and 
Compound Sounds, as combined into Syllables and Words. 
A New Edition. In medium 8vo, price 10s. 6d. cloth. 



[By the Author of " Two Years Before the Mast." 

DANA'S SEAMAN'S MANUAL; containing a 

Treatise on Practical Seamanship, with Plates; a Dictionary 
of Sea Terms ; Customs and Usages of the Merchant Service ; 
Laws relating to the Practical Duties of Master and Mariners. 
Second Edition. Price 5s. cloth. 



HINTS ON HORSEMANSHIP, to a Nephew 

and Niece ; or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common 
Riding. By Colonel George Greenwood, late of the Second 
Life Guards. Price 2$. 6d. 



CICERO'S LIFE AND LETTERS. The Life 

by Dr. Middleton ; The Letters translated by Wm. Melmoth 
and Dr. Heberden. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait and 
Vignette, price 16s. cloth. 



A LIST OF BOOKS 



VI. 

ELLEN MIDDLETON. A Tale. By Lady 

Georgiana Fullerton. Second Edition. In three volumes 
price 31$. 6d. cloth. 

VII. 

CAPTAIN BASIL HALL'S FRAGMENTS of 

VOYAGES and TRAVELS. A New Edition. In one volume, 
8vo, price 12s. cloth. 

VIII. 

DEERBROOK. A Novel. By Harriet Mar- 

tineau. A New Edition. In one pocket volume, price 6s. cloth. 

IX. 

THE HOUR AND THE MAN. A Historical 

Romance. By Harriet Martineau. A New Edition. In one 
pocket volume, price 6s. cloth. 



TALFOURD'S (MR. SERJEANT) VACATION 

RAMBLES AND THOUGHTS ; comprising the Recollections 
of three Continental Tours in the Vacations of 1841, 42, and 43. 
Second Edition. Price 10s. 6d. cloth. 

XL. 

DYCE'S REMARKS on Mr. C. KNIGHTS 

and Mr. J. P. COLLIER'S editions of SHAKSPEARE. In 

8vo, price 9s. cloth. 

XII. 

LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM: Essays. By 

An Invalid. Second Edition. Price 8s. boards. 

XIII. 

HISTOIRE DE FRANCE DU PETIT LOUIS. 

Par Lady Callcott. Price 2s. 6d. half-bound. 



SHELLEY'S (MRS.) RAMBLES in GERMANY 

AND ITALY in 1840, 1842, and" 1843. In 2 vols, post 8vo. Price 
21$. cloth. 



RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY EDWARD MOXON. 



POETRY. 



TENNYSON'S POEMS. 2 vols. Price 12s. boards. 
MILNES'S POEMS. 4 vols. Price 20s. boards. 
TRENCH'S JUSTIN MARTYR, and other Poems. 6s. bds. 

POEMS from Eastern Sources. Price 6s. bds. 

STERLING'S POEMS. Price 6s. boards. 

STRAFFORD. Price 5s. boards. 

BROWNING'S PARACELSUS. Price 6s. boards. 

SORDELLO. Price 6s. 6c/. boards. 

PATMORE'S (COVENTRY) POEMS, Price 5s. bds.. 
BARRETT'S (MISS) POEMS. 2 vols. Price 12s. bds, 

(In 21mo.) 

TALFOURD'S (SERJEANT) TRAGEDIES. Price 2s. 6d, 
TAYLOR'S PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE. Price 2s. 6cZ. 

EDWIN THE FAIR, &c. Price 2s. 6c*. 

BARRY CORNWALL'S SONGS. Price 2s. 6d. 
LEIGH HUNT'S POETICAL WORKS. Price 2s. 6d 
PERCY'S RELIQUES. 3 vols. Price 7s. 6d. 
LAMB'S DRAMATIC SPECIMENS. 2 vols. Price 5*. 



8 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY EDWARD MOXON. 



CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR WORKS 



SHELLEY'S ESSAYS AND LETTERS. Price 5s. 

SEDGWICK'S LETTERS FROM ABROAD. Price 2s. 6d. 

DANA'S TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST. 2s. 6d. 

CLEVELAND'S VOYAGES AND COMMERCIAL EN- 
TERPRISES. Price 2s. 6d. 

ELLIS'S EMBASSY TO CHINA. Price 2s. 6rf. 

-PRINGLE'S RESIDENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA. 3s. 6d. 

THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. Price 5s. 

HUNT'S INDICATOR, AND COMPANION. Price 5s. 

THE SEER; or, COMMON-PLACES RE~ 

FRESHED. Price 5s. 

SHERIDAN'S DRAMATIC WORKS. With an INTRO- 
DUCTION. By LEIGH HUNT. Price 5s. 

LAMB'S LIFE AND LETTERS. Price 5s. 

ROSAMUND GRAY, &c. Price 2s. 6d. 

TALES FROM SHAKSPEARE. Price 2s. 6d. 

ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. To which is 

added, MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL. Price 2s. 

HALL'S VOYAGE TO LOO-CHOO. Price 2s. Qd. 
TRAVELS IN SOUTH AMERICA. Price 5s. 

FRAGMENTS OF VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 

First, Second, and Third Series. Price 5s. each. 



CAMPBELL'S POETICAL WORKS. Price 2s. 6d. 
LAMB'S POETICAL WORKS. Price Is. 6c£. 
BAILLIE'S (JOANNA) FUGITIVE VERSES. Price is. 
SHAKSPEARE'S POEMS. Price Is. 



Bradbury & Evans, Printers, Whitefriars- 



ESSAYS. 



" Quand on se porte bien, on ne comprend pas comment on pourrait faire si on etait 
malade; et quand on Test, on prend medecine gaiement : le mal y resout. On n'a plus 
les passions et les desirs des divertissements et des promenades, que la sante donnait, et 
qui sont incompatibles avec les necessites de la maladie. La nature donne alors des 
passions et des desirs conformes a l'etat present. Ce ne sont que les craintes que nous nous 
donnons nous-mimes, et non pas la nature, qui nous troublent ; parcequ'elles joignent a 
l'etat ou nous sommes les passions de l'etat ou nous ne sommes pas."— Pascal. 



LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM. 



ESSAYS. 



AN INVALID. 



; For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain." — Shakspere. 
The saddest birds a season find to sing." — Robert Southwell. 



SECOND EDITION. 



LONDON : 4 
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER-STREET. 

MDCCCXLIV. 




£ 



4$. 



LONDON : 
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 



CONTENTS. 

— ♦ — 

PAGE 

To vii 

The Transient and the Permanent in the Sick- 

Room 1 

Sympathy to the Invalid 11 

Nature to the Invalid 43 

Life to the Invalid 64 

Death to the Invalid 104 

Temper 126 

Becoming Inured . . . ... . . . 146 

Power of Ideas in the Sick-Room . . . . 155 

Some Perils and Pains of Invalidism . . . . 176 

Some Gains and Sweets of Invalidism . . . 197 



TO 

1 Passion I see is catching ; for mine eyes, 
Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine, 
Began to water." Shakspere. 

' When we our betters see bearing our woes, 
We scarcely think our miseries our foes ; 
Who alone suffers suffers most i' the mind, 
Leaving free things and happy shows behind. 
But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip, 
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship." Shakspere. 



As I write this, I cannot but wonder when and 
how you will read it, and whether it will cause 
a single throb at the idea that it may be meant 
for you. You have been in my mind during the 
passage of almost all the thoughts that will be 
found in this book. But for your sympathy — 
confidently reckoned on, though never asked — I 
do not know that I should have had courage to 
mark their procession, and record their order. 
I have felt that if I spoke of these things at all, 
it must be to some fellow-sufferer — to some one 



Vlll DEDICATION. 

who had attained these experiences before me or 
with me ; and, having you for my companion 
throughout, (however unconsciously to yourself), 
I have uttered many things that I could hardly 
otherwise have spoken : for one may speak far 
more freely with a friend, though in the hearing 
of others, than when singly addressing a number. 
Most frequently, however, I have forgotten that 
others could hear, and have conversed as with 
you alone. 

It matters little, in this view, that we have 
never met — -that each of us does not know, except 
by the eye of the mind, with what outward 
face the other has encountered the unusual lot 
appointed to both. While I was as busy as any 
one on the sunny plain of life, I heard of you laid 
aside in the shadowy recess where our sunshine 
of hope and joy could never penetrate to you ; 
and it was with reverence, and not pity, that I 
inquired of those who could tell whether you had 
separate lights of heaven, such as there are for 



DEDICATION. IX 

retreats like yours. When I was myself with- 
drawn into such a recess, if I learned to pity 
more than before, it was with a still enhanced 
reverence for your older experience. As the evils 
of protracted unhealthiness came upon me, one 
after another, I knew that they had all visited 
you long ago ; and I felt as if they brought me 
a greeting from you. For me, at least, you have 
not suffered in vain. Would there might be any- 
thing in this volume which might enable you to 
say the same to me ! 

At all events, there is something sweet and 
consoling in the fellowship. Though we would, 
if we could, endure anything to set the other free 
— though we would thankfully take upon us any 
suffering that nature could bear for the thought 
that no one else was qualified to conceive of our 
troubles, — yet, as this cannot be, we may make the 
most of the comfort of our companionship. In 
our wakeful night seasons, when the healthy and 
the happy are asleep, we may call to each other 



X DEDICATION. 

from our retreats, to know each how the other 
fares ; and, whether we are at the moment dreary 
or at peace, it may be that there are angels 
abroad, (perhaps the messengers of our own sym- 
pathies), who may bear our mutual greetings, and 
drop them on their rounds. Often has this been 
my fancy, when the images close about me have 
been terrific enough; and when, in the very 
throng of these horrors, I have cast about for 
some charm or talisman wherewith to rid myself 
of them, and some voice of prayer has presently 
reached me from a temple on the furthest horizon 
of my life— or some sweet or triumphant hymn of 
submission or praise has floated to my spirit's ear 
from the far shores of my childhood — I have 
hoped, in the midst of the heaven thus brought 
down about me, that the same consolations were 
visiting you, who in the same need would, I knew, 
make the same appeal. 

But there are times when the sense of fellowship 
is dearer still. You know, doubtless, as well as 



DEDICATION. XI 

I, the emptiness of the consolation when our 
pitying friends, in all love and sincerity, remind 
us of what we did by our efforts when we were 
well and active, and what we are doing still for 
the world, by preserving a decent quietness in 
the midst of our troubles. You know, as well as 
I, how withering would be the sense of our own 
nothingness, if we tried to take comfort from our 
own dignity and usefulness. You know, as well 
as I, how very far we can see from our place 
on the verge of life, over its expanse, and how 
ridiculous, if it were not shocking, would be any 
complacency on the ground of our having followed 
the instincts of our nature to w T ork, while work 
was possible, — the issues of such divinely- appointed 
instrumentality being wholly brought out and di- 
rected by Him who framed and actuated us. You 
know, as I do, how useful it is to human beings 
to have before their eyes spectacles of all expe- 
riences ; and we are alike willing, having worked 
while we could, now to suffer as we may, to help 



Xll DEDICATION. 

our kind in another mode. We feel it some 
little service to be appointed to, — having become 
accustomed to our footing on the shaking plank 
over the deep dark river, — to lead on and uphold 
with a steady hand some who may be appointed 
to follow, and perhaps to pass us upon it. 

But while agreeing in this, our happiest fellow- 
ship must be, I think, in seeing, with a clearness 
we could never otherwise have attained, the 
vastness and certainty of the progression with 
which we have so little to do. I do not believe it 
is possible for persons in health and action to 
trace, as we can, the agencies for good that are 
going on in life and the world. Or, if they can, 
it seems as if the perception were accompanied 
by a breathless fear, — a dread of being, if not 
crushed, whirled away somewhere, hurried along 
to new regions for which they are unprepared, 
and to which, however good, they would prefer 
the familiar. You and I, and our fellow-sufferers, 
see differently, whether or not we see further. 



DEDICATION. Xlll 

We know and feel, to the very centre of our 
souls, that there is no hurry, no crushing, no 
devastation attending Divine processes. While we 
see the whole system of human life rising and 
rising into a higher region and a purer light, 
we perceive that every atom is as much cared for 
as the whole. While we use our new insight to 
show us how things are done, — and gravely smile 
to see that it is by every man's overrating the 
issues of his immediate pursuit, in order that he 
may devote all his energies to it. (without which 
nothing would ever be clone.) we smile with 
another feeling presently, on perceiving how an 
industry and care from above are compensating to 
every man his mistake by giving him collateral 
benefits when he misses the direct good he sought. 
— by giving him and his helpers a wealth of ideas, 
as often as their schemes turn out, in their pro- 
fessed objects, profitless. When we see men 
straining every nerve to reach the tempting apples 
which are to prove dust and ashes in their jaws. 



XIV DEDICATION. 

we see also, by virtue of our position, the flying 
messenger who is descending with the ambrosia 
which is to feed their immortal part. We can 
tell that while revolutions are grandly operating, 
by which life and the world will in time change 
their aspect, — while a progress is advancing to 
which it is now scarcely conceivable that we 
should ever have dreamed of putting our hands, 
— there is not one of our passing thoughts that is 
not ordained, — not a sigh of weariness unheeded, 
— not an effort of patience that is not met half- 
way by divine pity, — not a generous emotion of 
triumph in the world's improvement that is not 
hallowed by the divine sympathy ever living and 
breathing round about us. This our peculiar 
privilege, of seeing and feeling something of the 
simultaneous vastness and minuteness of provi- 
dential administration, is one in which we most 
enjoy sympathy ; — at least, I do : — and in this, 
therefore, do I find your undoubted fellowship 
most precious. 



DEDICATION. XV 

Here then I end my greeting, — except in as far 
as the whole book is truly conversation with 
you. I shall not direct it to your hands, but 
trust to the most infallible force in the universe, 
— human sympathy, — to bring these words under 
your eye. If they should have the virtue to 
summon thoughts which may, for a single hour, 
soften your couch, shame and banish your foes of 
depression and pain, and set your chamber in holy 
order and something of cheerful adornment, I may 
have the honour of being your nurse, though I am 
myself laid low,— though hundreds of miles are 
between us, and though we can never know one 
another's face or voice. 

Yours, 



ESSAYS, 



THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN 
THE SICK-ROOM. 



" Lasting ! what »s lasting ? 

The earth that swims so well, must drown in fire, 

And Time be last to perish at the stake. 

The heavens must parch ; the universe must smoulder. 

Nothing but thoughts can live, and such thoughts only 

As god-like are, making God's recreation." I. Knowe. 

" Affliction worketh patience: and patience, experience; and experience, 
hope." St. Paul. 

" All places that the eye of Heaven visits 

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens." Shakspere. 



The sick-room becomes the scene of intense 
convictions ; and among these, none, it seems to 
me, is more distinct and powerful than that of the 
permanent nature of good, and the transient 
nature of evil. At times I could almost believe 
that long sickness or other trouble is ordained 
to prove to us this very point — a point worth any 
costliness of proof. 

The truth may pass across the mind of one 

B 



ESSAYS. 



who has suffered briefly — may occur to him when 
glancing back over his experience of a short sharp 
illness or adversity. He may say to himself that 
his temporary suffering brought him lasting good, 
in revealing to him the sympathy of his friends, 
and the close connexion of human happiness with 
things unseen ; but this occasional recognition of 
the truth is a very different thing from the abiding 
and unspeakably vivid conviction of it, which 
arises out of a condition of protracted suffering. 
It may look like a paradox to say that a condition 
of permanent pain is that which, above all, proves 
to one the transient nature of pain ; but this is 
what I do affirm, and can testify. 

The apparent contradiction lies in the words 
"permanent pain" — that condition being made up 
of a series of pains, each of which is annihilated 
as it departs; whereas all real good has an 
existence beyond the moment, and is indeed 
indestructible. 

A day's illness may teach something of this to a 
thoughtful mind ; but the most inconsiderate can 
scarcely fail to learn the lesson, when the proof is 
drawn out over a succession of months and seasons. 
With me, it has now included several New 



GOOD AND EVIL. 3 

Year's Days ; and what have they taught me ? 
What any future New Year's retrospect cannot 
possibly contradict, and must confirm : though it 
can scarcely illustrate further what is already as 
clear as its moon and stars. 

During the year looked back upon, all the days, 
and most hours of the day, have had their portion 
of pain — usually mild — now and then, for a few 
marked hours of a few marked weeks, severe and 
engrossing ; while, perhaps, some dozen evenings, 
and half-dozen mornings, are remembered as being 
times of almost entire ease. So much for the 
body. The mind, meantime, though clear and 
active, has been so far affected by the bodily state 
as to lose all its gaiety, and, by disuse, almost to 
forget its sense of enjoyment. During the year, 
perhaps, there may have been two surprises of 
light-heartedness, for four hours in June, and two 
hours and a half in October, with a few single 
flashes of joy in the intermediate seasons, on the 
occurrence of some rousing idea, or the revival of 
some ancient association. Over all the rest has 
brooded a thick heavy cloud of care, apparently 
causeless, but not for that the less real. This is 
the sum of the pains of the year, in relation to 

b2 



ESSAYS. 



illness. Where are these pains now ? — Not only 
gone, but annihilated. They are destroyed so 
utterly, that even memory can lay no hold upon 
them. The fact of their occurrence is all that 
even memory can preserve. The sensations them- 
selves cannot be retained, nor recalled, nor re- 
vived ; they are the most absolutely evanescent, 
the most essentially and completely destructible of 
all things. Sensations are unimaginable to those 
who are most familiar with them. Their concomi- 
tants may be remembered, and so vividly con- 
ceived of, as to excite emotions at a future time : 
but the sensations themselves cannot be conceived 
of when absent. This pain, which I feel now as I 
write, I have felt innumerable times before ; yet, 
accustomed as I am to entertain and manage it, 
the sensation itself is new every time ; and a few 
hours hence I shall be as unable to represent it to 
myself as to the healthiest person in the house. 
Thus are all the pains of the year annihilated. 
What remains ? 

All the good remains. 

And how is this ? whence this wide difference 
between the good and the evil ? 

Because the good is indissolubly connected with 



GOOD AND EVIL. 5 

ideas — with the unseen realities which are inde- 
structible. This is true, even of those pleasures 
of sense which of themselves would be as evanes- 
cent as bodily pains. The flowers sent to me by- 
kind neighbours have not perished, — that is, the 
idea and pleasure of them remain, though every 
blossom was withered months ago. The game 
and fruit, eaten in their season, remain as comforts 
and luxuries, preserved in the love that sent them. 
Every letter and conversation abides, — every new 
idea is mine for ever ; all the knowledge, all the 
experience of the year, is so much gain. Even 
the courses of the planets, and the changes of the 
moon, and the hay-making and harvest, are so 
much immortal wealth — as real a possession as all 
the pain of the year was a passing apparition. 
Yes, even the quick bursts of sunshine are still 
mine. For one instance, which will well illustrate 
what I mean, let us look back so far as the Spring, 
and take one particular night of severe pain, which 
made all rest impossible. A short intermission, 
which enabled me to send my servant to rest, 
having ended in pain, I was unwilling to give 
further disturbance, and wandered, from mere 
misery, from my bed and my dim room, which 



6 ESSAYS. 

seemed full of pain, to the next apartment, where 
some glimmer through the thick window-curtain 
showed that there was light abroad. Light indeed ! 
as I found on looking forth. The sun, resting on 
the edge of the sea, was hidden from me by the 
walls of the old priory: but a flood of rays poured 
through the windows of the ruin, and gushed over 
the waters, strewing them with diamonds, and 
then across the green down before my windows, 
gilding its furrows, and then lighting up the 
yellow sands on the opposite shore of the harbour, 
while the market-garden below was glittering with 
dew and busy with early bees and butterflies. 
Besides these bees and butterflies, nothing seemed 
stirring, except the earliest riser of the neighbour- 
hood, to whom the garden belongs. At the 
moment, she was passing down to feed her pigs, 
and let out her cows; and her easy pace, arms 
a-kimbo, and complacent survey of her early 
greens, presented me with a picture of ease so 
opposite to my own state, as to impress me in- 
effaceably. I was suffering too much to enjoy this 
picture at the moment : but how was it at the end 
of the year ? The pains of all those hours were 
annihilated — as completely vanished as if they had 



GOOD AND EVIL. 7 

never been ; while the momentary peep behind 
the window-curtain made me possessor of this 
radiant picture for evermore. This is an illus- 
tration of the universal fact. That brief instant of 
good has swallowed up long weary hours of pain. 
An inexperienced observer might, at the moment, 
have thought the conditions of my gain heavy 
enough ; but the conditions being not only dis- 
charged, but annihilated long ago, and the trea- 
sure remaining for ever, would not my best friend 
congratulate me on that sunrise ? Suppose it 
shining on, now and for ever, in the souls of a 
hundred other invalids or mourners, who may 
have marked it in the same manner, and who 
shall estimate its glory and its good ! 

It is clear that the conviction I speak of arises 
from the supposition — indispensable and, I believe, 
almost universal, — that pain is the chastisement of 
a Father ; or, at least, that it is, in some way or 
other, ordained for, or instrumental to good. The 
experience of men leaves this belief uncontested, 
and incontestable. Otherwise, evil and pain would 
be, in their effects on sufferers, long-lived, if not 
as immortal as good. If we believed our sufferings 
to be inflicted by cruelty or malice, our pains 



8 ESSAYS, 

would immediately take a permanent existence by 
becoming connected with our passions of fear, 
revenge, &c; though still — as is known to students 
of the human soul, — the evil, however long sus- 
tained, must be finally absorbed in the good. We, 
of our age and state of society, however, have to 
do with none who believe pain to be inflicted by 
the malignity of a superior being. Those who are 
not so happy as to recognise in it a mere disguise 
of blessings otherwise unattainable, receive it, 
under some of the various theories of necessary 
imperfection, as something unavoidable, and there- 
fore to be received placidly, if not gratefully. 
These would admit, as cheerfully as the adorers of 
a chastening Father, the richness of my wealth, 
as I lie, on New Year's Eve, surrounded by the 
treasures of the departing year, — the kindly Year 
which has utterly destroyed for me so much that 
is terrible and grievous, while he leaves with me 
all the new knowledge and power, all the teachings 
from on high, and the love from far and near, and 
even the frailest-seeming blossom of pleasure that, 
in any moment, he has cast into my lap. 

Thus has a succession of these friendly years 
now visited me and gone : and, as far as we can 



GOOD AND EVIL. 



see, thus will every future one repeat the lesson. 
If any person disputes, no one can disprove, the 
result, wrought out, as it is, by natural experience. 
It is no contradiction, that some are soured by 
suffering. Their pains, like mine, are gone ; and 
with them, as with others, it is ideas which remain; 
and ideas are essentially good, a part of the inde- 
structible inner life which must, from its very 
nature, sooner or later part with its evil, through 
experience of the superabounding good of the 
universe. If one so soured by pain dies in this 
mood, the ideal part of him is that which remains 
to be carried into a fresh scene, where the mood 
cannot be fed by the experience which nourished 
it here. If he lives long enough to change his 
mood, there is every probability that the benignant 
influences which are perpetually at work through- 
out life and nature will dissolve and disperse his 
troubles, as the eastern lights, the breath of morn- 
ing and the chirp of birds, steal in upon the senses 
of the troubled sleeper, and thence possessing 
themselves of his reason, convince him that the 
miseries of the night season were but a dream. 

True and consoling as it maybe for him, and for 
those about him, to find thus that " trouble may 

b3 



10 ESSAYS. 

endure for a nighty but joy cometh in the morn- 
ing/' they have not fully learned the lessons of 
the sick-room if they are not aware that, while the 
troubles of that night season are thus sure to pass 
away, its product of thoughts and experiences 
must endure, till the stars which looked down 
upon the scene have dissolved in their courses. 
The constellations formed in the human soul, out 
of the chaos of pain, must have a duration com- 
pared with which, those of the firmament are but as 
the sparkles showered over the sea by the rising 
sun. To one still in this chaos, — if he do but see 
the creative process advancing, — it can be no rea- 
sonable matter of complaint, that his course is laid 
the while through such a region ; and he will feel 
almost ashamed of even the most passing anxiety 
as to how soon he may be permitted to emerge. 



11 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 



'•' The essence of friendship is entireness : a total magnanimity and trust. It 
must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god. that it 
may deify both." Emebsom. 

" Our hands in one, we will not shrink 
From life's severest due : — 
Our hands in one, we will not blink 

The terrible and true." Mjuxbs-. 



If all sorrow teaches us that nothing is more 
universal than sympathy, long and irremediable 
sickness proves plainly, that nothing is more 
various than its kinds and degrees ; or, it may be, 
than the manifestations of the sympathetic grief 
which is shared by all. In a sharp sickness of 
a few days or weeks, all good and kind people act 
and speak much alike ; are busy and ingenious in 
hastening the recovery, and providing relief mean- 
time. It is when death is not to be looked for, 
nor yet health, that the test is applied ; that, on 
either hand, the genius and the awkwardness ot 
consolation present themselves, with a vast gra- 
dation between these extremes. It is easy and 
pleasant to be grateful for all, and to appreciate 



12 ESSAYS. 

the love and pity which inspire them ; but it is 
impossible to relish all equally, or to give the same 
admiration to that which flows forth fully and 
freely, and that sympathy which is suppressed, 
restricted, or in any way changed before it reaches 
its object. 

O ! what a heavenly solace to the soul is free 
sympathy in its hour of need ! There is but one 
that can vie with it ; and that one is, in truth, an 
enhancement of the same emotions. Communion 
with 

" Mercy, carried infinite degrees 
Beyond the tenderness of human hearts," 

is, indeed, the supreme, incommunicable delight 
which must be only referred to, because no sense 
of it can be conveyed by language ; but, because it 
is of kindred nature, though separated by immea- 
surable distance, the solace of human sympathy 
ranks next to this. What a springing of the heart, 
like that on the discovery of a new truth, or 
entrance on a new enterprise in youth, attends the 
revelation to a sufferer of some stroke of genius in 
the consolations of one of the many who grieve 
for his affliction ! 

Many give their best thoughts to provide 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 13 

alleviations — whether in the form of medicines, or 
dainties for the mind or palate, for the eye or ear ; 
and sweet is the enjoyment of the kindness which 
provides, whether the luxuries themselves can be 
relished or not. Some kind soul does a better 
service still, by affording opportunity for the suf- 
ferer to minister to other afflicted ones ; to relieve 
some distress of poverty, or other want. This is 
sweet; but there are times when the personal 
trial needs some solace nearer and more direct 
than this. Then is the hour when the pain of 
sympathy in the hearts of friends impels them to 
cast about for relief, and tempts them to speak of 
hope to the sufferer who has no hope^ or none 
compatible with the kind of consolation they 
attempt. Going back to the days when I, myself, 
was the sympathiser, I remember how strong is 
the temptation to imagine, and to assure the sick 
one, that his pain will not last ; that the time will 
come when he will be well again ; that he is 
already better ; or, if it be impossible to say that, 
that he will get used to his affliction, and find it 
more endurable. How was it that I did not see 
that such offers of consolation must be purely 
irritating to one who was not feeling better, nor 



14 ESSAYS. 

believing that he should ever be better, nor in 
a state to be cheered by any speculation as to 
whether his pain would, or would not become more 
endurable with time ! Exactly in proportion to 
the zeal with which such considerations were 
pressed, must have been the sufferer's clearness of 
perception of the disguised selfishness which dic- 
tated the topics and the words. I was (as I half 
suspected at the time, from my sense of restraint 
and uneasiness,) trying to console myself, and not 
my friend ; indulging my own cowardice, my own 
shrinking from a painful truth, at the expense of 
the feelings of the sufferer for whom my heart was 
aching. I, who had no genius for consolation, at 
least in cases of illness, have been silently corrected 
by the benignest of reproofs, — by the experience 
of this genius in my own season of infirmity. 

The manifestations of sympathetic feeling are 
as various as of other feelings ; but the differences 
are marked by those whom they concern, with a 
keenness proportioned to the hunger of their heart. 
The sick man has even sometimes to assure himself 
of the grief of his friends, by their silence to him 
on circumstances which he cannot but feel most 
important. Their letters, extending over months 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 15 

and years, perhaps contain no mention of his trial, 
no reference to his condition, not a line which 
will show to his executors that the years over which 
they spread were years of illness. Though he can 
account for this suppression in the very love of his 
friends, yet it brings no particular consolation to 
him. Others, perhaps, administer praise ; — praise, 
which is the last thing a humbled sufferer can 
appropriate ; — praise of his patience or fortitude, 
which perhaps arrives at the moment when his 
resolution has wholly given way, and tears may 
be streaming from his eyes, and exclamations of 
anguish bursting from his lips. Such consolations 
require forbearance, however it may be mingled 
with gratitude. Far different was my emotion, 
when one said to me, with a face like the face of an 
angel, " Why should we be bent upon your being 
better, and make up a bright prospect for you ? I 
see no brightness in it ; and the time seems past for 
expecting you ever to be well." How my spirits 
rose in a moment at this recognition of the truth ! 
And again — when I was weakly dwelling on a 
consideration which troubled me much for some 
time, that many of my friends gave me credit for 
far severer pain than I was enduring, and that I 



16 



ESSAYS. 



thus felt myself a sort of impostor, encroaching 
unwarrantably on their sympathies, " O ! never 
mind ! " was the reply. " That may be more than 
balanced hereafter. You will suffer more, with 
time — or you will seem to yourself to suffer more ; 
and then you will have less sympathy. We grow 
tired of despairing, and think less and less of such 
cases, whether reasonably or not ; and you may 
have less sympathy when you need it more. 
Meantime, you are not answerable for what your 
friends feel ; and it is good for them — natural and 
right — whether you think it accurate or not." 

These words put a new heart into me, dismissed 
my scruples about the over-wealth of the present 
hour, and strengthened my soul for future need — 
the hour of which has not, however, yet arrived. 
It is a comfortable season, if it may but last, when 
one's friends have ceased to hope unreasonably, 
and not " grown tired of despairing." 

Another friend, endowed both by nature and 
experience with the power I speak of, gave me 
strength for months — for my whole probation — by 
a brave utterance of one word, " Yes." In answer 
to a hoping consoler, I told 'a truth of fact which 
sounded dismal, though because it was fact I spoke 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 17 

it in no dismal mood ; and the genius at my side, 
by a confirmatory " Yes/ 5 opened to my view a 
whole world of aid in prospect from a soul so 
penetrating and so true. 

I know it is pleaded that there are sufferers not 
strong enough to bear the truth — who like to be 
soothed with hopes, well or ill-grounded; who 
find immediate comfort in being told that they will 
throw off their pain and be at ease. If there be 
such, I have never known them ; and I doubt their 
existence. I believe that the tendency to make 
the worst of bodily complaints, on which so many 
satires (some just) are founded, is much aggravated, 
if not generally caused, by the tendency in the 
healthy and happy to disallow pain and a sad 
prospect. Children, weak and unpractised sufferers 
as they are, are found not to be consolable in the 
manner proposed. We all know the story of the 
little boy in the street, crying from the smart of a 
fall, who, when assured by a good-natured pas- 
senger that he should not cry, because he would 
be well to-morrow, answered, " Then I won't cry 
to-morrow. ** 

The weakest sufferers are precisely those who 
are least able to appropriate the future and its good 



18 ESSAYS. 

things. If this be true of the weak, and if the 
strong find it irritating to be medicined with soft 
fictions, or presented with anything but sound truth, 
the popular method of consolation appears to be 
excluded altogether. If my own life were to be 
lived over again, I should, from the strength of 
this conviction, convert most of its words of 
intended consolation into a far more consolatory 
condolence. Never again should the suffering 
spirit turn from me, as I fear it has often done — if 
too gentle to be irritated — yet sickening at hollow 
words of promise, when instant fellow-feeling was 
what was needed; and mournfully thinking, though 
too kind to say it, " ( the heart knoweth its own 
bitterness, 5 and mine must endure alone." The 
fair retribution has not followed, for never thus 
have I been left to feel. 

I am here reminded of a sort of consolation, 
often offered, which I do not at all understand. I 
do not quarrel with it, however, for it may suit 
others less insensible to its claims. Sequestered 
sufferers, whose term of activity is over, and who 
apparently have only to endure as they may, and 
learn and enjoy what they can, till they receive 
their summons to enter on a new career, are 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 19 

referred for solace to their consciences — to their 
consciousness of services rendered to society, and 
duty done in active days. I strongly doubt 
whether Conscience was ever appointed to the 
function of Consoler. I more than doubt ; I dis- 
believe it. According to my own experience, the 
utmost enjoyment that conscience is capable of is 
a negative state, that of ease. Its power of suf- 
fering is strong ; and its natural and best condition 
I take to be one of simple ease ; but for enjoyment 
and consolation, I believe we must look to other 
powers and susceptibilities of our nature. 

It is inconceivable to me that our moral sense 
can ever be gratified by anything in our own moral 
state. It must be more offended by our own sins 
and weaknesses than by all the other sin and 
weakness in the world, in proportion as the evil is 
more profoundly known to it, and more nakedly 
disgusting, because it is stripped of the allowances 
and palliations which are admissible in all other 
cases. And this disgust is not compensated for 
by a corresponding satisfaction in our own good ; 
for the very best good we can ever recognise in 
ourselves falls so far short of our own conceptions, 
so fails to satisfy the requisitions of the moral 



20 ESSAYS. 

sense, that it can afford no gratification. A 
conscience which can enjoy itself on its own 
resources, must be of a very low degree — I should 
say of a spurious nature. In the highest state of 
health that I can conceive of — health spiritual and 
physical— I believe the function of the moral 
sense to be to delight itself in good wherever it is 
to be found, (and no wise person will look for it 
within himself,) to keep watch and ward against 
evil, and to cherish lowliness at home by its in- 
cessant consciousness of the imperfection there ; 
an imperfection so keenly felt by an enlightened 
and accurate conscience, as to cause a wholesome 
going abroad for interests and gratifications, so 
that ease may be found in self-forgetfulness. The 
necessity which so many feel of a relief from their 
disappointed conscience — of adventitious merits on 
which to rely in the failure of their own — of a 
saving interposition between their own imper- 
fections and the requisitions of God and duty ; 
this prevalent need is an unanswerable rebuke to 
the presumption which talks of " the happiness of 
an approving conscience." If it is thus in the 
season of vigour, health, and self-command, how 
inexpressibly absurd is the mistake of bringing 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 21 

such a topic as consolation to the sick and seques- 
tered ! — to the sick, whose whole heart is faint, 
and the mental frame disordered, more or less, in 
proportion as the body is jaded and the nerves 
unstrung; and to the sequestered, who perforce 
devour their own hearts, and find them the bitter- 
est food ! Why, one of the most painful trials of 
long sickness and seclusion is, that all old pains, 
all past moral sufferings, are renewed and magni- 
fied; that in sleepless nights, and especially on 
waking in the morning, every old sin and folly, 
and even the most trifling error, rises up anew, 
however long ago repented of and forgiven, and, 
in the activity of ordinary life, forgotten. Any sort 
of ghost is more easily laid than this kind. Though 
their " brains were out " long years ago, they 
continue to come — they present themselves in 
defiance of all — even the most sacred, exorcisms ; 
so that it becomes one of the duties of the sick to 
bear their presence with composure, and cease to 
struggle for their exclusion. In the midst of this 
experience, to have one's friends come, and desire 
one to look back upon one's past life for compla- 
cency and self-gratulation, in order to assure one's 
self how well one has used one's powers and oppor- 



22 ESSAYS. 

tunities — how much one has done for society — how 
lofty and honourable a life one has led — and so 
forth, — O ! what words can express the absurdity ! 
If the consoler could but see the invisible array 
which comes thronging into the sick-room from 
the deep regions of the past, brought by every 
sound of nature without, by every movement of 
the spirit within; the pale lips of dead friends 
whispering one's hard or careless words, spoken 
in childhood or youth — the upbraiding gaze of 
duties slighted and opportunities neglected — the 
horrible apparition of old selfishness and pusillani- 
mities — the disgusting foolery of idiotic vanities ; 
if the consoler could catch a momentary glimpse 
of this phantasmagoria of the sick-room, he would 
turn with fear and loathing from the past, and 
shudder, while the inured invalid smiles, at such 
a choice of topics for solace. 

Then it might become the turn of the invalid to 
console — to explain how these are but phantoms — 
how solace does abound, though it comes from 
every region rather than the kingdom of con- 
science — and how, while the past is dry and dreary 
enough, there are streams descending from the 
heaven-bright mountain-tops of the future, for 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 23 

ever flowing down to our retreat, pure enough for 
the most fastidious longing, abundant enough for 
the thirstiest soul. The consoler may then learn 
for life how easily all personal complacencies may- 
be dispensed with, while the sufferer can tell of a 
true " refuge and strength," and " present help," 
and of this " river that gladdens the city of God," 
and flows to meet us as we journey towards it. 

But, the anxious consoler may say, Is it right 
so to banish these complacencies ? If you really 
have served the world, however imperfectly in 
your own eyes — if you have sown thoughts in 
minds, and called forth affections in hearts — ought 
you to deny the facts, or that they are good ? 

By no means. If you assure me of these things 
as facts, you bring me good news. But I should 
feel it as good news — perhaps better — if the ser- 
vice had been rendered by anybody else ; for the 
simple reason that the good would then be to me 
unmixed, which now it is not, nor can ever be. 
Call upon me, whenever you will, to rejoice that 
men have gained an idea — that the aged or 
children have been amused or strengthened — or 
that society has been relieved from an abuse, by 
any one's means. Bouse me from the depression 



24 ESSAYS. 

of pain, wake me up from sleep for the better 
refreshment of this news, and I will rejoice ; but 
do not think to enhance your tidings by telling me 
that these things are my doing. The only effect of 
that is, to remind me how much better the service 
might have been done. Surely we both believe 
that all truth and goodness are destined to arise 
sooner or later among men. To be visited with 
new or good ideas is a blessing : to be appointed 
to communicate them is an honour : but these 
blessings and honours are a ground for personal 
humility, not complacency. It is to me impossible 
to connect the idea of merit with any such destiny. 
There is nothing we have so little hand in as our 
own ideas ; there is no occupation less voluntary 
than that of uttering them. And so will every 
servant of his race say of his own species of service. 
He will rejoice that something new and good is 
acquired or attained by his race ; and he must 
naturally be thankful for the honour and enjoy- 
ment appointed to him as the medium : but he can 
find no ground for personal complacency in the 
matter. He will be utterly careless whether men 
know, a hundred years hence, through whom they 
received the benefit, or whether his name has been 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 25 

for ninety years lost to all but his intimate friends. 
If he were offered the choice between this repu- 
tation and the fact of his having conquered one 
unkind emotion, or made one single effort of 
endurance, he would eagerly prefer the secret 
genuine good to the blazoned apparent one. 

" There is something extremely absurd and 
ridiculous/' says the holy Hartley, " in supposing 
a person to be perpetually feasting his own mind 
with, and dwelling upon, the praises that already 
are, or which he hopes will hereafter be, given to 
him. And yet, unless a man does this (which 
besides would evidently incapacitate him for de- 
serving or obtaining praise), how can he fill up 
a thousandth part of his time with the pleasures 
of ambition?" Even more absurd is to me the 
image of a lonely sufferer, trying not only to fill 
up his time, but to soothe his pains of body, and 
calm his anguish of spirit, by drawing delight 
from the remembrance of his own little contrivings 
and doings in the world. I would recommend, in 
preference, the project of drawing sunbeams from 
cucumbers, as a solace on the rack. 

If it is asked, after all this, '■' who can console ? 
how is it possible to please and soothe the sufferer ?" 



26 ESSAYS. 

I answer, that nothing is easier— nothing is more 
common — nothing more natural to simple-minded 
people. Never creature had more title than I to 
speak confidently of this, from experience which 
melts my heart day by day. " Speaking the truth 
in love," is the way. One who does this cannot 
but be an angel of consolation. Everything but 
truth becomes loathed in a sick-room. The restless 
can repose on nothing but this : the sharpened 
intellectual appetite can be satisfied with nothing 
less substantial ; the susceptible spiritual taste can 
be gratified with nothing less genuine, noble, and 
fair. 

Then the question arises, what sort of truth ? 
Why, that which is appropriate to the one who 
administers. To each a separate gift may be 
appointed. Only let all avoid every shadow of 
falsehood. Let the nurse avow that the medicine 
is nauseous. Let the physician declare that the 
treatment will be painful. Let sister, or brother, 
or friend, tell me that I must never look to be 
well. When the time approaches that I am to 
die, let me be told that I am to die, and when. If 
I encroach thoughtlessly on the time or strength 
of those about me, let me be reminded ; if selfishly, 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. Zi 

let me be remonstrated with. Thus to speak the 
truth in love is in the power of all. Higher ser- 
vice is a talent in the hands of those who have a 
genius for sympathy — a genius less rare, thank 
God ! than other kinds. 

The archangel of consolation is the friend who, 
at a fitting moment, reminds me of my high calling. 
Not the clergyman, making his stated visit for the 
purpose ; not the zealous watcher for souls, who 
fears for mine on the ground of difference of doc- 
trine ; not the meddler, who takes charge of my 
spiritual relations whether I will or no : none such 
are, by virtue of these offices, effectual consolers. 
But if the friend of my brighter days — with whom 
I have travelled, sung, danced, consulted about my 
work, enjoyed books and society — the friend, now 
far off, busy in robust health of body and spirit, 
sends me a missive which says, " You languish — 
you are sick at heart. But put this sickness from 
your heart, and your pains under your feet. You 
have known before that there is a divine joy in en- 
durance. Prove it now. Lift up your head amidst 
your lot, and wait the issue — not submissively, 
but heroically. Live out your season, not wist- 
fully looking out for hope, or shrinking from fear : 

c2 



28 ESSAYS. 

but serenely and immoveably (because in full 
understanding with God), endure;" if such an 
appeal comes, and at any hour (for there is no 
hour of sickness with which it is not congenial), 
what an influx of life does it bring ! What a 
heavenly day, week, year, succeeds ! How the 
crippled spirit leaps up at the miraculous touch, 
and springs on its way, praising God in his very 
temple ! And again, when a thoughtful, con- 
scientious spirit, guided by an analytical intellect, 
utters from a distance, not as an appeal, but as in 
soliloquy — " With an eternity before us, it cannot 
matter much, if we would but consider it, whether 
we are laid aside for such or such a length of time; 
whether we can be busy for others at this moment, 
or must wait so many months or years : and as for 
ourselves, how can we tell but that we shall find 
the experience we are gaining worth any cost of 
suffering ? " When such a thought comes under 
my eye, as if I overheard some spirit in the night- 
wind communing with itself, I feel a strong and 
kindly hand take my heart and steep it in patience. 
Again, a kind visitor, eloquent by using few words 
or none on matters nearest at heart, takes down 
from my shelves a Fenelon or other quietist, and 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 29 

with silent finger points to the saying, inexhaust- 
ible in truth, that it is what we are that matters — 
not what we do ; and here, in one moment, do I 
find a boundless career opened to me within the 
four walls of my room. Again — a tender spirit, 
anxious under responsibility, says (( If you could 
but fully feel, as you will one day feel, the privi- 
lege of having your life and lot settled for you — 
your spirit free, your mind at leisure — no hurry, 
no conflicts nor misgivings about duty — you would 
easily conceive that there are some who would 
gladly exchange with you, and pour into your lap 
willingly all the good things that you seem to be 
without. I dare say we are very philosophical for 
you about your sufferings; but where I do sympa- 
thise with you, is in regard to this clearness and 
settledness of your life's duty and affairs." To this 
again, my whole being cries " amen ! " Here are 
a few of the heavenly messages which have come 
to me through human hearts. When below these 
are ranged the innumerable ministrations of help, 
of smiles and tears, of solid comforts and beguiling 
luxuries, it does indeed seem impossible that I 
should be in any degree dubious or hard to please 
in the contemplation and reception of human 



SO ESSAYS, 

sympathy. What I have said of its most perfect 
forms, I have said from my own knowledge. 

Under this head of sympathy occurs the impor- 
tant practical consideration, what should be the 
arrangements of a permanent invalid, in regard to 
companionship ? 

In most cases, this is no matter of choice, but a 
point settled by domestic circumstances ; where it 
is not, however, I cannot but wish that more con- 
sideration was given to the comfort of being alone 
in illness. This is so far from being understood, 
that, though the cases are numerous of sufferers 
who prefer, and earnestly endeavour to procure 
solitude, they are, if not resisted, wondered at, 
and humoured for a supposed peculiarity, rather 
than seen to be reasonable ; whereas, if they are 
listened to as the best judges of their own com- 
forts, it may be found that they have reason on 
their side. 

In a house full of relations, it may be unnatural 
for an invalid to pass many hours alone; but 
where, as is the case with numbers who belong to 
the middle and working classes of society, all the 
other members of the family have occupations 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 31 

and duties — regular business in life — without the 
charge of the invalid, it does appear to me, and 
is felt by me through experience, to be incom- 
parably the happiest plan for the sick one to live 
alone. By experience it is found to be not only 
expedient, but important in regard to happiness. 
In pictures of the sick-room, drawn by those who 
are at ease and happy, the group is always of the 
sufferer supported and soothed by some loving 
hand and tender voice, and every pain shared by 
sympathy. This may be an approach to truth in 
the case of short sharp illness, where the sufferer 
is taken by surprise, and has his whole lesson to 
learn ; but a very different account would often 
be given by an invalid whose burden is for life, 
and who has learned the truths of the condition. 
We, of that class, find it best and happiest to 
admit our friends only in our easiest hours, when 
we can enjoy their society, and feel ourselves least 
of a burden ; and it is indispensable to our peace 
of mind to be alone when in pain. Where welfare 
of body is out of the question, peace of mind 
becomes an object of supreme importance; and this 
is unattainable when we see any whom we love 
suffering, in our sufferings, even more than we 



32 ESSAYS. 

do : or when we know that we have been the 
means of turning any one's day of ease and plea- 
sure into sorrow. The experience of years quali- 
fies me to speak about this ; and I declare that I 
know of no comfort, at the end of a day of suffer- 
ing, comparable to that of feeling that, however it 
may have been with one's self, no one else has 
suffered, — that one's own fogs have dimmed 
nobody's sunshine : and when this grows to be the 
nightly comfort of weeks, months, and years, it 
becomes the most valuable element in the peace of 
the sufferer, and lightens his whole lot. If not in 
the midst of pain, he feels in prospect of it, and 
after it, that it really matters very little whether 
and how much he suffers, if nobody else is pained 
by it. It becomes a habit, from the recurrence of 
this feeling, to write letters in one's best mood ; 
to give an account of one's self in one's best hours ; 
to present one's most cheerful aspect abroad, and 
keep one's miseries close at home, under lock 
and key. 

The objection commonly brought to this system 
is, that it is injurious to one's loving and anxious 
friends. But I do not find it so. So loving and 
anxious are my friends, that they do not need the 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 33 

wretched stimulus of seeing me suffer. All that 
can be done for me is done ; and it would be no 
consolation, but a great aggravation to me, that 
they should suffer gratuitously. Their general 
love, and care and concern for me, are fully satis- 
fying to me ; and I know that I have only to call 
and they will come. But I feel with inexpressible 
comfort what a difference there is between their 
general concern for my state, and the pain of days, 
now separately spent by them in ease and joy, 
which would be more dreary to them than to me, 
if I let them share my dreariness. A trifling inci- 
dent, which occurred the other day, gave me 
strong satisfaction, as proving that where my 
method can be made a system, it works well, — 
promoting the cheerfulness, without impairing the 
sympathies, of even the youngest of those for 
whom I have a welcome only at certain seasons. 
Two little friends were with me — one greatly 
admiring various luxuries about me, and thence 
proceeding to reckon up a large amount of privi- 
leges and enjoyments in my possession and pros- 
pect, when his companion said, with a sigh and 
tenderness of tone, musical to my soul, " Ah! but 
then, there is the unhealthiness! that spoils every- 

c3 



34 ESSAYS. 

thing ! " To which, the other mournfully assented. 
What more could these children know by having 
their hearts wounded by the spectacle of suffering ! 
And if they may be spared the pain, larger 
minds and more ripened hearts must require it 
even less. 

I need not say that this plan of solitude in pain 
supposes sufficient and kindly attendance; but, 
for a permanence, (though I know it to be other- 
wise in short illnesses,) there is no attendance to 
be compared with that of a servant. In as far as 
the help is mechanical, it tends to habituate the 
sufferer to his lot, and the relation is sustained 
with the least expenditure of painful feeling on 
both sides, — with the least anxiety, as well as pain 
of sympathy. 

There is sufficient kindliness excited in the 
attendant by the appeal to her feelings, while 
there is no call for the agony which a congenial 
friend must sustain ; and, on the other side, there 
is no overwhelming sense of obligation to the nurse, 
but a satisfactory consciousness of, at least, partial 
requital. It is no small item in the account of this 
method, that the promotion of the happiness of the 
attendant is a cheerful, natural, and salutary pur- 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 35 

suit to the invalid : a daily duty imposed when so 
many others are withdrawn ; a fragment of bene- 
ficent power left in the scene of its wreck. To 
dignify her by putting one's self under express 
and frequent obligations to her, — to rejoice her by 
enjoying relief or pleasure devised by her inge- 
nuity.— to spare her health, promote her little 
fortunes, encourage her best tastes and aspirations, 
and draw out for her, as well as for one's self, the 
lessons of the sick-room : to study these things 
befits the mutual relation, and cheers the life of 
the sufferer, while the connexion is not so close as 
to involve the severer pains of sympathy. 

In a sick-room, where health is never again to 
enter, it is well and easily understood that com- 
memorative seasons, anniversaries, &c. are far 
from being, as elsewhere, among the gayest. In 
truth, they are often mournful enough : but I am 
confident that they are most cheerily spent alone. 
Xo heart leal to its kind can bear to let them pass 
unnoticed. It is an intolerable selfishness to 
abolish them, as far as in one lies, because they 
have ceased to gladden us: this would be as paltry 
as to turn one's back on an old companion, for- 
merly all merriment and smiles, because he comes 



36 ESSAYS. 

to us in mourning or in tears ; or, let us say, 
abstracted and thoughtful. But it does not succeed 
to make small attempts to keep the day, for the 
sake of one or two companions, putting up Christ- 
mas holly over the fire-place, where there is only 
one to sit, and having Christmas fare brought to 
the couch, to be sent away again. But when one 
is alone, the matter is very different, and becomes 
far gayer. There is nothing, then, to prevent my 
being in the world again for the day ; no human 
presence to chain me to my prison. When my 
servant is dismissed to make merry with the rest, 
and I am alone with my holly sprigs and the 
memories of old years, I can flit at will among the 
family groups that I see gathered round many 
fire-sides. If the morning is sunny, I actually see, 
with my telescope, the gay crowds that throng the 
opposite shore after church ; and the sight revives 
the dimmed image of crowded streets, and brings 
back to my ear the almost forgotten sound of " the 
church-going bell. 5,> When it grows dark, and my 
lamp burns so steadily as to give of itself a deep 
impression of stillness; when there is no sound 
but of the cinder dropping on the hearth, or of the 
turning of the leaf as I read or write, there is 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 37 

something of a holiday feeling in pausing to view 
and listen to what is going on in all the houses 
where one has an interest. By means of that 
inimitable telescope we carry about in us, (which 
acts as well in the pitch-dark night as at noon, and 
defies distance and house-walls,) I see in turn a 
Christmas tree, with its tapers glittering in a room 
full of young eyes, or the games and the dance, or 
the cozy little party of elderly folk round the fire 
or the tea-table ; and I hear, not the actual jokes, 
but the laughter, and " the sough of words without 
the sense," and can catch at least the soul of the 
merriment. If I am at ease, I am verily among 
them : if not, I am thankful not to be there ; and, 
at all events have, from life-long association, caught 
so much of the contagious spirit of sociability, that, 
when midnight comes, I lie down with an impres- 
sion of its having been an extraordinary day, — a 
social one, though, (as these are the days when one 
is sure not to see one's doctor,) the face of my maid 
is, in reality, the only one that has met my eyes. 
O yes ! on these marked days, however it may be 
on ordinary ones, our friends may take our word 
for it that we are most cheery alone. 

There is one day of the year of which every- 



38 ESSAYS. 

body will believe this, — one's birthday. Regarded 
as a birthday usually and naturally is, in ordinary 
circumstances, there must be something melan- 
choly in it when attempted to be kept in the sick- 
room of a permanent invalid : but this melancholy 
is lost when one is alone. It is true, one's mind 
goes back to the festivals of the day in one's child- 
hood, and to the mantling feelings of one's youth, 
when each birthday brought us a step further into 
the world which lay in its gay charms all before 
us ; and we find the gray hairs and thin hands of 
to-day form an ugly contrast with the images con- 
jured up. 'But, in another view, — a view which 
can be enjoyed only in silence and alone, — what a 
sanctity belongs to these gray hairs and other 
tokens of decayj They and the day are each 
tokens (how dear !) seals (how distinct !) of pro- 
mise of our selection for a not distant admittance 
to a station whence we may review life and the 
world to better advantage than even now. If, 
with every year of contemplation, the world 
appears a more astonishing fact, and life a more 
noble mystery, we cannot but be reanimated by 
the recurrence of every birthday which draws us 
up higher into the region of contemplation, and 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 39 

nearer to the gate within which lies the disclosure 
of all mysteries w r hich worthily occupy us now, 
and doubtless a new series of others adapted to 
our then ennobled powers. This is a birthday 
experience which it requires leisure and solitude 
fully to appropriate : and it yet leaves liberty for 
the human sympathies which belong to the season. 
Post time is looked to for its sure freight of love 
and pity and good wishes from a few — or not a 
few — whose affections keep them even more on 
the watch than ourselves for one's own holy day. 
Letters are one's best company on that day, — and 
best if they are one's only company. 

There is one point on which I can speak only 
as every one may, — from observation and thought, 
— but on which I have a very decided impression, 
notwithstanding ; — as to the conduct which would 
be dictated by the truest sympathy in a case which 
not unfrequently occurs. I have known instances 
of persons, most benevolent and thoughtless of 
themselves through life, becoming exigeans and 
oppressive in their last days, merely through want 
of information as to what they are doing. One 
attendant is usually preferred to all others by a 
dying person : and I have seen the favourite nurse 



40 



ESSAYS. 



worn out by the incessant service required day 
and night by the sufferer, in ignorance how time 
passes, — even in mistake of the night for the day. 
I have known the most devoted and benevolent 
of women call up her young nurse from a snatch 
of sleep at two in the morning to read aloud, when 
she had been reading aloud for six or seven hours 
of the preceding day. I have known a kind- 
hearted and self-denying man require of two or 
three members of his family to sit and talk and be 
merry in his chamber, two or three hours after 
midnight : — and both for want of a mere intima- 
tion that it was night, and time for the nurse's 
rest. How it makes one shudder to think of this 
being one's own case ! The passing doubt whether 
one can trust one's friends, when the season 
comes, to save one from such tyrannical mistakes, 
is a doubt sickening to the heart. Nothing is 
clearer now, when we are in full possession of 
ourselves, than that the most sympathising friend 
is one who cherishes our amiability and reason- 
ableness to the last, — who preserves our perfect 
understanding with those about us through all 
dimness of the eyes and wandering of the brain. 
If I could not trust my friends to save me from 



SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID. 41 

involuntary encroachment at the last, I had rather 
scoop myself a hole in the sand of the desert, and 
die alone, than be tended by the gentlest hands, 
and soothed by the most loving voices in the 
choicest chamber. 

It is doubtless easiest to comply at the moment 
of such exactions, at any sacrifice of subsequent 
health and nerve : but it should be remembered 
that the sacrifice is not of health alone. The 
posthumous love must suffer ; — 01 if not the love, 
the respect for the departed. It is impossible to 
love one who appears in a selfish aspect, — though 
it be the merest mask, most briefly worn, — so 
well as the countenance that never concealed its 
benevolence for a moment. Let then the timely 
thought of the future, — a provident care for the 
memory of the dying friend, suggest the easy 
prudence which may obviate encroachment. Let 
the bewildered sufferer be frequently and cheer- 
fully told the hour, — and informed that such an 
one is going to rest, to be replaced by another for 
so many hours. A little forethought and resource 
may generally prevent the great evil I speak of: 
and if not, true sympathy requires that there 
should be a cheerful word of remonstrance — or 



42 ESSAYS. 

let us call it rectification. So may it be with me^ 
if so lingering a departure be appointed ! Thus 
would every one say beforehand; and it seems 
to me a sin against every one's moral rights not 
to take him at his word. 



43 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 



1 ' O mighty love ! Man is one world and hath 
Another to attend him ! " George Herbert. 

; Let us find room for this great guest in our small houses." Emerson. 

" Shut not so soon ! The dull-eyed night 
Has not as yet begun 
To make a seizure of the light, 
Or to seal up the sun." Herrick. 



When an invalid is under sentence of disease 
for life, it becomes a duty of first-rate importance 
to select a proper place of abode. This is often 
overlooked; and a sick prisoner goes on to live 
where he lived before, for no other reason than 
because he lived there before. Many a sufferer 
languishes amidst street noises, or passes year 
after year in a room whose windows command 
dead walls, or paved courts, or some such objects; 
so that he sees nothing of Nature but such sky 
and stars as show themselves above the chimney- 
tops. I remember the heart-ache it gave me to 
see a youth, confined to a recumbent posture for 
two or three years, lying in a room whence he 
could see nothing, and dependent therefore on 



44 ESSAYS. 

the cage of birds by his bed-side, and the flowers 
his friends sent him, for the only notices of Nature 
that reached him, except the summer's heat and 
winter's cold. There was no sufficient reason why 
he should not have been placed where he could 
overlook fields, or even the sea. 

If a healthy man, entering upon a temporary 
imprisonment, hangs his walls with a paper 
covered with roses, and every one sympathises in 
this forethought for his mind's health, much more 
should the invalid, (who, though he must be a 
prisoner, has yet liberty of choice where his 
prison shall be,) provide for sustaining and im- 
proving his attachment to Nature, and for be- 
guiling his sufferings, by the unequalled refresh- 
ments she affords. He will be wise to sacrifice 
indolence, habit, money and convenience, at the 
outset, to place himself where he can command 
the widest or the most beautiful view that can 
be had without sacrificing advantages more essen- 
tial still. There are few things more essential 
still: but there are some; — such as medical 
attendance, and a command of the ordinary 
conveniences of life. 

What is the best kind of view for a sick pri- 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 4.") 

soner's windows to command ? I have chosen the 
sea, and am satisfied with my choice. We should 
have the widest expanse of sky, for night scenery. 
We should have a wide expanse of land or water, 
for the sake of a sense of liberty, yet more than 
for variety; and also because then the inestimable 
help of a telescope may be called in. Think of 
the difference to us between seeing from our sofas 
the width of a street, even if it be Sackville-street, 
Dublin, or Portland Place, in London, and thirty 
miles of sea view, with its long boundary of rocks, 
and the power of sweeping our glance over half 
a county, by means of a telescope ! But the 
chief ground of preference of the sea is less its 
space than its motion, and the perpetual shifting 
of objects caused by it. There can be nothing in 
inland scenery which can give the sense of life 
and motion and connexion with the world like sea 
changes. The motion of a waterfall is too con- 
tinuous, — too little varied, — as the breaking of 
the waves would be, if that were all the sea could 
afford. The fitful action of a windmill, — the 
waving of trees, the ever-changing aspects of 
mountains are good and beautiful : but there is 
something more life-like in the going forth and 



46 ESSAYS. 

return of ships, in the passage of fleets, and in the 
never-ending variety of a fishery. 

But then, there must not be too much sea. The 
strongest eyes and nerves could not support the 
glare and oppressive vastness of an unrelieved 
expanse of waters. I was aware of this in time, 
and fixed myself where the view of the sea was 
inferior to what I should have preferred, if I had 
come to the coast for a summer visit. Between 
my window and the sea is a green down, as green 
as any field in Ireland ; and on the nearer half of 
this down, haymaking goes forward in its season. 
It slopes down to a hollow, where the Prior of old 
preserved his fish, there being sluices formerly at 
either end, the one opening upon the river, and 
the other upon the little haven below the Priory, 
whose ruins still crown the rock. From the Prior's 
fish-pond, the green down slopes upwards again 
to a ridge ; and on the slope are cows grazing all 
summer, and half way into the winter. Over the 
ridge, I survey the harbour and all its traffic, the 
view extending from the light-houses far to the 
right, to a horizon of sea to the left. Beyond the 
harbour lies another county, with, first, its sandy 
beach, where there are frequent wrecks— too 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 47 

interesting to an invalid. — and a fine stretch of 
rocky shore to the left ; and above the rocks, a 
spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys 
flying their kites ; lovers and friends taking their 
breezy walk on Sundays ; the sportsman with his 
gun and dog ; and the washerwomen converging 
from the farm-houses on Saturday evenings, to 
carry their loads, in company, to the village on the 
yet further height. I see them, now talking in a 
cluster, as they walk each with her white burden 
on her head, and now in file, as they pass through 
the narrow lane; and finally they part off on the 
village green, each to some neighbouring house of 
the gentry. Behind the village and the heath, 
stretches the rail-road ; and I watch the train 
triumphantly careering along the level road, and 
puffing forth its steam above hedges and groups 
of trees, and then labouring and panting up the 
ascent, till it is lost between two heights, which at 
last bound my view. But on these heights are 
more objects : a windmill, now in motion and now 
at rest ; a lime-kiln, in a picturesque rocky field ; 
an ancient church tower, barely visible in the 
morning, but conspicuous when the setting sun 
shines upon it ; a colliery, with its lofty wagon- 



48 ESSAYS. 

way, and the self-moving wagons running hither 
and thither, as if in pure wilfulness ; and three or 
four farms, at various degrees of ascent, whose 
yards, paddocks, and dairies I am better acquainted 
with than their inhabitants would believe possible. 
I know every stack of the one on the heights. 
Against the sky I see the stacking of corn and 
hay in the season, and can detect the slicing away 
of the provender, with an accurate eye, at the 
distance of several miles. I can follow the sociable 
farmer in his summer-evening ride, pricking on in 
the lanes where he is alone, in order to have more 
time for the unconscionable gossip at the gate of 
the next farm-house, and for the second talk over 
the paddock-fence of the next, or for the third or 
fourth before the porch, or over the wall, when 
the resident farmer comes out, pipe in mouth, and 
puffs away amidst his chat, till the wife appears, 
with a shawl over her cap, to see what can detain 
him so long ; and the daughter follows, with her 
gown turned over head (for it is now chill even- 
ing), and at last the sociable horseman finds he 
must be going, looks at his watch, and, with a 
gesture of surprise, turns his steed down a steep 
broken way to the beach, and canters home over 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 49 

the sands, left hard and wet by the ebbing tide, 
the white horse making his progress visible to me 
through the dusk. Then, if the question arises 
which has most of the gossip spirit, he or I, there 
is no shame in the answer. Any such small amuse- 
ment is better than harmless — is salutary — which 
carries the spirit of the sick prisoner abroad into 
the open air, and among country people. When 
I shut down my window, I feel that my mind has 
had an airing. 

But there are many times when these distant 
views cannot be sought ; when we are too languid 
for any objects that do not present themselves near 
at hand. Here, too, I am provided. I overlook 
gardens, and particularly a well-managed market- 
garden, from which I have learned, and enjoyed, 
not a little. From the radish-sowing in early 
spring, to the latest turnip and onion cropping, I 
watch the growth of everything, and hence feel an 
interest in the frosts and rain, which I should 
otherwise not dream of. A shower is worth much 
to me when the wide potato-beds, all dry and 
withering in the morning, are green and fresh in 
the evening light ; and the mistress of the garden, 
bringing up her pails of frothing milk from the 



50 ESSAYS, 

cow-house, looks about her with complacency, and 
comes forth with fresh alacrity to cut the young 
lettuces which are sent for, for somebody's supper 
of cold lamb. 

The usual drawback of a sea-side residence is 
the deficiency of trees. I see none (except through 
the telescope) but one shabby sycamore, which 
grows between my eye and the chimney of the baths 
in the haven. But this is not a pure disadvantage. 
I may see less beauty in summer, but I also see 
less dreariness in winter. 

The winter beauty of the coast is a great consi- 
deration. The snow does not lie ; at least rarely 
for more than a very few hours ; and then it has 
no time to lose its lustre. When I look forth in 
the morning, the whole land may be sheeted with 
glittering snow, while the myrtle-green sea swells 
and tumbles, forming an almost incredible contrast 
to the summer aspect of both, and even to the 
afternoon aspect ; for before sunset the snow is 
gone, except in the hollows ; all is green again on 
shore, and the waves are lilac, crested with white. 
My winter pleasures of this kind were, at first, a 
pure surprise to me. I had spent every winter of 
my life in a town ; and here, how different it is ! 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 51 

The sun shines into my room from my hour of rising 
till within a few minutes of dusk, and this, almost 
by settled custom, till February, our worst month. 
The sheeny sea, swelling in orange light, is crossed 
by fishing-boats, which look black by contrast, and 
there is none of the deadness of winter in the 
landscape ; no leafless trees, no locking up with 
ice ; and the air comes in through my open upper 
sash brisk, but sun-warmed. The robins twitter 
and hop in my flower-boxes, outside the window ; 
and the sea-birds sit on the water, or cluster on the 
spits of sand left by the tide. Within-doors,' all is 
gay and bright with flowering narcissus, tulips, 
crocus, and hyacinths. And at night, what a 
heaven ! What an expanse of stars above, appear- 
ing more steadfast, the more the Northern Lights 
dart and quiver ! And what a silvery sheet of 
moonlight below, crossed by vessels more black 
than those which looked blackest in the golden sea 
of the morning ! It makes one's very frame shiver 
with a delicious surprise to look, (and the more, 
the oftener one looks,) at a moonlit sea through the 
telescope ; at least, it is so with one who can never 
get near the object in any other way. I doubt 
whether there be any inland spectacle so singular 
d2 



52 ESSAYS. 

and stirring, except that which is common to both, 
a good telescopic view of the planets. This tran- 
scends all. It is well to see by day, the shadows 
of walkers on the wet sands ; the shadows of the 
sails of a windmill on the sward ; the shadow of 
rocks in a deep sea cave ; but far beyond this is it 
to see the shadow of the disk of Saturn on his 
rings. How is it that so many sick prisoners are 
needlessly deprived of all these sights; shut up in 
a street of a town ? What is there there, that can 
compensate them for what they lose ? 

There is some set-off to the winter privileges I 
have spoken of, in an occasional day of storms ; 
perhaps two or three in each season. These are 
very dreary while they last ; though, considering 
the reaction, the next fine day, salutary on the 
whole. On these days, the horror of the winds is 
great. One's very bed shakes under them ; and 
some neighbour's house is pretty sure to be un- 
roofed. The window-cushions must be removed, 
because nothing can keep out the rain, not even 
the ugly array of cloths laid over all the sashes. 
The rain and spray seem to ooze through the very 
glass. The wet comes through to the ceiling, 
however perfect the tiling.- The splash and dash 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 53 

against the panes are wearing to the nerves. 
Balls of foam drive, like little balloons, over the 
garden ; and, sooner or later in the day, we see 
the ominous rush of men and boys to the rocks and 
the ridge, and we know that there is mischief. We 
see either a vessel labouring over the bar, amidst 
an universal expectation that she will strike; or 
we see, by a certain slope of the masts, that she is 
actually on the rocks ; or she drives wilfully over 
to the sands, in spite of all the efforts of steam-tugs 
and her own crew ; and then come forth the life- 
boats, which we cannot help watching, but which 
look as if they must themselves capsize, and 
increase the misery instead of preventing it. Then, 
when the crew are taken from the rigging, and 
carried up to the port, ensues the painful sight of 
the destruction of the vessel; parties, or files of 
women, boys, and men, passing along the ridge or 
the sands with the spoils ; bundles of sailcloth, 
armsful of spars, shoulder-loads of planks ; while, 
in the midst, there is sure to be a report, false or 
true, of a vessel having foundered, somewhere near 
at hand. On such days, it is a relief to bar the 
shutters at length, and close the curtains, and light 
the lamp, and, if the wind will allow, to forget the 



54 ESSAYS. 

history of the day. Still more thankful are we to 
go to bed — I can hardly say to rest — for invalids 
are liable to a return in the night of the painful 
impressions of noon, with exaggerations, unless 
the agitation has been such as to wear them out 
with fatigue. But, as I said, such days are very 
few. Two or three such in a year, and two or 
three weeks of shifting sea-fog in spring, are nearly 
all the drawbacks we have ; nearly the only obscu- 
rations of Nature's beauties. 

How different are " the seasons, and their 
change, 5 ' to us, and to the busy inhabitants of 
towns ! How common is it for townspeople to 
observe, that the shortest day is past without their 
remembering it was so near ! or the equinox, or 
even the longest day ! Whereas, we sick watchers 
have, as it were, a property in the changes of the 
seasons, and even of the moon. It is a good we 
would not sell for any profit, to say to ourselves, 
at the end of March, that the six months of longest 
days are now before us; that we are entering upon 
a region of light evenings, with their soft lulling 
beauties ; and of short nights, when, late as we go 
to rest, we can almost bid defiance to horrors, and 
the depressions of darkness. There is a monthly 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 55 

spring of the spirits too, when the young moon 
appears again, and we have the prospect of three 
weeks' pleasure in her course, if the sky be propi- 
tious. I have often smiled in detecting in myself 
this sense of property in such shows ; in becoming 
aware of a sort of resentment, of feeling of personal 
grievance, when the sky is not propitious ; when I 
have no benefit of the moon for several nights 
together, through the malice of the clouds, or the 
sea-haze in spring. But, now I have learned by 
observation where and when to look for the rising 
moon, what a superb pleasure it is to lie watching 
the sea-line, night after night, unwilling to shut 
the window, to leave the window-couch, to let 
the lamp be lighted, till the punctual and radiant 
blessing comes, answering to my hope, surpassing 
my expectation, and appearing to greet me with 
express and consolatory intent ! Should I actually 
have quitted life without this set of affections, if I 
had not been ill ? I believe it. And, moreover, 
I believe that my interest in these spectacles of 
Nature has created a new regard to them in others. 
I see a looking out for the rising moon among the 
neighbours, who have possessed the same horizon- 
line all their lives, but did not know its value till 



56 ESSAYS. 

they saw what it is to me. I observe the children 
from the cottage swinging themselves up to obtain 
a peep over the palings, when they see me on the 
watch in the window ; and an occasional peep at a 
planet, through my telescope, appears to dress the 
heavens in quite a new light to such as venture to 
take a look. 

They do not know, however, anything of my 
most thrilling experience of these things — for it 
happens when they are all at rest. I keep late 
hours, (for the sake of husbanding my seasons of 
ease ;) and now and then I have nerve enough to 
look abroad for my last vision of the day, an hour 
after midnight, when the gibbous moon, — having 
forsaken the sea, — slowly surmounts the priory 
ruins on the high rock, appearing in the black- 
blue heaven like a quite different planet from that 
which I have been watching, — and from that 
which I shall next greet, a slender crescent in the 
light western sky, just after sunset. To go from 
this spectacle to one's bed is to recover for the 
hour one's health of soul, at least : and the remem- 
brance of such a thrill is a cordial for future sickly 
hours which strengthens by keeping. 

I have a sense of property too in the larks 



NATL'RE TO THE INVALID. 5*3 

which nestle in all the furrows of the down. It is 
a disquietude to see them start up and soar, with 
premature joy, on some mild January day, before 
our snows and storms have begun, when f detect 
in myself a feeling of duty to the careless crea- 
tures, — a longing to warn them, by my superior 
wisdom, that they must not reckon yet on spring. 
And on April mornings, when the shadows are 
strong in the hollows, and some neighbour's child 
sends me in a handful of primroses from the fields, 
I look forth, as for my due, to see the warblers 
spring and fall, and to catch their carol above the 
hum and rejoicing outcry of awakening Nature. 
If the yellow butterflies do not come to my flower- 
box in the sunny noon, I feel myself wronged. 
But they do come, — and so do the bees : and there 
are times when the service is too importunate, — 
when the life and light are more than I can bear, 
and I draw down the blind, and shut myself in 
with my weakness, and with thoughts more ab- 
stract. But when, in former days, had simple, 
natural influences such power over me ? How is 
it that the long-suffering sick, already deprived of 
so much, are ever needlessly debarred from natural 
and renovating pleasures like these ? 

d3 



58 ESSAYS. 

Watch the effect upon them of a picture, or a 
print of a breezy tree, — of a gushing stream, — of 
a group of children swinging on a gate in a lane. 
If the$- do not (because they cannot) express in 
words the thirst of their souls for these images, 
observe how their eyes wistfully follow the port- 
folio or volume of plates which ministers this 
scenery to them. Observe how, in looking at 
portraits, their notice fastens at once on any 
morsel of back-ground which presents any rural 
objects. Observe the sad fondness with which 
they cherish flowers, — how reluctantly it is ad- 
mitted that they fade. Mark the value of pre- 
sents of bulbs, — above the most splendid array of 
plants in flower, which kind people love to send 
to sick prisoners. Plants in bloom are beautiful 
and glorious ; but the pleasure to a prisoner is to 
see the process of growth. It is less the bright 
and fragrant flower that the spirit longs for than 
the spectacle of vegetation. 

Blessings on the inventors and improvers of 
fern-houses! We feel towards them a mingling 
of the gratitude due to physicians, and appropriate 
to the Good People. We find under their glass- 
bells fairy gifts, and prescriptions devised with 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 59 

consummate skill. In towns, let the sick prisoner 
have a fern-house as a compensation for rural 
pleasures; and in the country as an addition to 
them. 

Blessings on the writers of voyages and travels ; 
and not the less for their not having contemplated 
our case in describing what they have seen ! A 
school-boy's or a soldier's eagerness after voyages 
and travels is nothing to that of an invalid. We 
are insatiable in regard to this kind of book. To 
us it is scenery, exercise, fresh air. The new 
knowledge is quite a secondary consideration. We 
are weary of the aspect of a chest of drawers, — 
tired of certain marks on the wall, and of many 
unchangeable features of our apartment; so that 
when a morning comes, and our eyes open on 
these objects, and we foresee the seasons of pain 
or bodily distress, or mental depression, which we 
know must come round as regularly as the hours, 
we loathe the prospect of our day. Things clear 
up a little when we rise, and we think we ought 
to be writing a letter to such-a-one, which has 
been on our conscience for some time. While 
the paper and ink are being brought, we put out 
our hand for that book, — arrived or laid in sight 



60 ESSAYS. 

this morning. It is a Journal of Travels to the 
Polar Sea, or oyer the Passes of the Alps, — or in 
the Punjab, — or in Central or South America. 
Here the leaves turn over rapidly ; — there we 
linger, and read one paragraph again and again, 
dwelling fondly on some congregation of images, 
to be seen by our bodily eyes no more : — on we 
go till stopped by the fluttering and distress, — the 
familiar pain, or the leaden down-sinking of the 
spirits, and wonder that our trying time has come 
so soon, before the letter is written. It has not 
come soon; — it i's only that some hours of our 
penance have been beguiled, — that we have been 
let out of our prison for a holiday, and are now 
brought back to our schooling. But the good 
does not end here. We see everything with dif- 
ferent eyes, — the chest of drawers,— the walls, — 
the bookshelves, and the pattern of the rug. We 
have been seeing the Northern Lights and ice- 
bergs : we have been watching for avalanches, or 
for the sun-rise from Etna, or gazing over the 
Pampas, or peering through the primeval forest ; 
and fragments of these visions freshen the very 
daylight to us. 

Blessings, above all, on Christopher North ! We 



* NATURE TO THE INVALID. 61 

cannot but wonder whether he ever cast a thought 
upon such as we are when breasting the breeze on 
the moors, or pressing up the mountain-side, or 
watching beside the trout-stream ; or summoning 
the fowls of heaven, and passing them in review 
into his Aviary ; — or, especially, whether he had 
any thought of recreating us when he sent forth his 
" Recreations " within reach of our hands. If he 
did not think of sick prisoners in issuing his vital, 
breezy book, he has missed a pleasure worthy of a 
heart like his. He pities the town-dwellers who 
might relish nature and will not : but his pity for 
them must be destitute of the zest which pity 
derives from a consciousness of helpfulness. He 
can hardly help those to country privileges who 
will not help themselves. But has he remembered 
the chamber-dwellers, — the involuntary plodders 
within narrow bounds, — few in comparison with 
the other class, it is true, but, if estimated by 
emotion — by experience in which his heart can 
sympathise, not less entitled to his regards ? 

Whether he thought of us or not, he has 
recreated us. Whether he is now conscious of the 
fact or not, his spirit has come, many a time while 
his tired body slept, and opened our prison-doors, 



62 ESSAYS. 

and led us a long flight over mountain and moor, 
lake and lea, and dropped us again on our beds, 
refreshed and soothed, to dream at least of having 
felt the long-lost sensation of health once more. 
Blessings on him then, as the kindest of the 
friendly ghosts who use well their privilege of 
passing in and out of all secret and sorrowful 
places, as they go to and fro on the earth ! If he 
has ministered to us with more or less deliberate 
intent, he needs not to be told with what hearti- 
ness we drink his health in the first full draught 
of the spring west wind — how cordially we pledge 
him in the sparkling thunder-shower, or the brim- 
ming harvest-moon. 

O ! if every one who sorrows for us would help 
us to assert our claim to Nature's nursing, we 
should soon have our solace and our due. We 
have not all the vigour and spirit, — nor even the 
inclination, in our morbid state, to turn our faces 
to the fountain of solace — the fresh waters which 
cool the spirit when fretted by its tormenting com- 
panion. We cannot infallibly keep alive in our 
weak selves the love of Nature which would lead 
us to repose ourselves upon her, and forget the . 
evils which even she cannot cure. But this should 



NATURE TO THE INVALID. 63 

be done for us. When our sentence is passed, clear 

and irreversible, the next thing is to make it as 
lenient as possible in its operation ; and especially 
by seeing that it is through no oversight that, if 
the outward man must decay, the inward man is 
not renewed day by day. This renewal, say some, 
must be by grace. "Well, Nature is God's grace, 
meant to abound to all, — and not least to those 
whom, by his chastening, he may be humbly sup- 
posed to love. 



64 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 



" There is a pause near death when men grow bold 
Toward all things else." Robert Landor. 

" Man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the 
soul worketh, and he less astonished at particular wonders : he will learn that 
there is no profane history ; that all history is sacred ; that the universe is 
represented in an atom , in a moment of time. He will weave no longer a spotted 
life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease 
from what is base and frivolous in his own life, and be content with all places, 
and any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in the 
negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath already the 
whole future in the bottom of the heart." Emerson. 



Can we not all remember the time when, on 
first taking to heart Milton, and afterwards Aken- 
side, — (before knowing anything of Dante,) we 
conceived the grandest moment of possible exist- 
ence to be that of a Seraph, poised on balanced 
wings, watching the bringing out of a world from 
chaos, its completion in fitness, beauty and ra- 
diance, and its first motion in its orbit, when sent 
forth by the creative hand on its everlasting way ? 
How many a young imagination has dwelt on this 
image till the act appeared to be almost one of 
memory, — till the vision became one of the per- 
suasives to entertain the notion of human pre- 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 65 

existence, in which we find one or another about 
us apt to delight ! To me, this conception was, in 
my childhood, one of eminent delight ; and when, 
years afterwards, I was involved in more than the 
ordinary toil and hurry of existence, I now and 
then recurred to the old image, with a sort of 
longing to exchange my function, — my share of 
the world-building in which we all have to help, 
for the privilege of the supposed seraph. Was 
there nothing prophetic, or at least provident, in 
this ? Is not sequestration from the action of life 
a different thing to me from what it would have 
been if there had been no preparation of the 
imagination ? Though I, and my fellows in lot, 
must wait long for the seraphic powers which 
would enable us fully to enjoy and use our posi- 
tion, we have the position ; and it is for us to see 
how far we can make our privilege correspond to 
the anticipation. 

Nothing is more impossible to represent in 
words, even to one's self in meditative moments, 
than what it is to lie on the verge of life and 
watch, with nothing to do but to think, and learn 
from what we behold. Let any one recall what it 
is to feel suddenly, by personal experience, the 



66 ESSAYS. 

full depth of meaning of some saying, always 
believed in, often repeated with sincerity, but 
never till now known. Every one has felt this, in 
regard to some one proverb, or divine scriptural 
clause, or word of some right royal philosopher or 
poet. Let any one then try to conceive of an 
extension of this realisation through all that has 
ever been wisely said of man and human life, 
and he will be endeavouring to imagine our ex- 
perience. Engrossing, thrilling, overpowering as 
the experience is, we have each to bear it alone ; 
for each of us is surrounded by the active and the 
busy, who have a different gift and a different 
office ;— and if not, it is one of those experiences 
which are incommunicable. If we endeavour to 
utter our thoughts on the folly of the pursuit of 
wealth, on the emptiness of ambition, on the sur- 
face nature of distinctions of rank, &c. we are 
only saying what our hearers have had by heart 
all their lives from books, — through a long range 
of authors, from Solomon to Burns. Spoken 
moralities really reach only those whom they im- 
mediately concern; — and they are such as are 
saying the same things within their own hearts. 
We utter them under two conditions : — sometimes 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 67 

because we cannot help it ; and sometimes under 
a sense of certainty that a human heart somewhere 
is needing the sympathy for which we yearn. 

You, my fellow-sufferer, now lying on your 
couch, the newspaper dropping from your hand, 
while your eyes are fixed on the lamp, are you not 
smiling at the thought that you have preserved, up 
to this time, more or less of that faith of your 
childhood — that everything that is in print is true ? 
Before we had our present leisure for reflection, 
we read one newspaper, — perhaps occasionally one 
on the other side. We found opposition of views ; 
but this was to be expected from diversities of 
minds and position. Now the whole press is open 
to us, and we see what is said on all sides. What 
an astonishing result ! We hear that Cabinet 
Ministers are apt to grow nervous about newspaper 
commentaries on their conduct. To us this seems 
scarcely possible, seeing, as we do, that, though 
every paper may be useful reading for the sugges- 
tions and other lights it affords, every one is at 
fault, as a judge. Every one forgets, actually or 
politicly, that it is in possession of only partial 
information, generally speaking ; we find no guard- 
ing intimation to the reader, that there may be 



68 ESSAYS. 

information behind which might alter the aspect of 
the question. Such notice may be too much to 
expect of diurnal literature ; but the confusion 
made by the positiveness of all parties, proceeding 
on their respective faulty grounds of fact — a posi- 
tiveness usually proportioned to the faultiness of 
the grounds — is such as might, one would think, 
relieve Cabinet Ministers who have their work at 
heart, from any very anxious solicitude about the 
judgments of the press, in regard to unfinished 
affairs. Meantime, what a work is done ! Amidst 
the flat contradictions of fact, and oppositions of 
opinion, — amidst the passion which sets men's wits 
to work to conceive of and propose all imaginable 
motives and results, what an abundance of light is 
struck out ! From a crowd of falsehoods, what a 
revelation we have of the truth, which no one man, 
nor party of men, could reveal ! — of the wants, 
wishes, and ideas of every class or coterie of 
society that can speak for itself, and of some that 
cannot ! 

Observe the process to which all this conduces. 
Before we were laid aside, we read, as everybody 
read, philosophical histories, in which the progress 
of society was presented ; we read of the old times, 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 69 

when the chieftain, whatever his title, dwelt in the 
castle on the steep, while his retainers were housed 
in a cluster of dwellings under the shadow of his 
protection. We read of the indispensable function 
of the Priest, in the castle, and of the rise of his 
order ; and then of the Lawyer and his order. We 
read of the origin of Commerce, beginning in 
monopoly ; and then of the gradual admission of 
more and more parties to the privileges of trade, 
and their settling themselves in situations favour- 
able for the purpose, and apart from the head 
monopolists. We read of the indispensable func- 
tion of the Merchant, and the rise of his order. 
We read of the feuds and wars of the aristocratic 
orders, which, while fatally weakening them, left- 
leisure for the middle and lower classes to rise and 
grow, and strengthen themselves, till the forces of 
society were shifted, and its destinies presented a 
new aspect. We read of the sure, though some- 
times intermitting, advance of popular interests, 
and reduction of aristocratic power and privileges, 
throughout the general field of civilisation. We 
read of all these things, and assented to what 
seemed so very clear — so distinct an interpretation 
of what had happened up to our own day. At the 



70 ESSAYS. 

same time, busy and involved as we were in the 
interests of the day, how little use did we make of 
the philosophic retrospect, which might and should 
have been prophetic ! You, I think, dreaded in 
every popular movement a whirlwind of destruc- 
tion — in every popular success a sentence of the 
dissolution of society. You believed that such a 
man, or such a set of men, could give stability to 
our condition, and fix us, for an unassignable time, 
at the point of the last settlement, or what you 
assumed to be the latest. I, meanwhile, believed 
that our safety or peril, for a term, depended on 
the event of this or that movement, the carrying 
of this or that question. I was not guilty of fear- 
ing political ruin. I did with constancy believe in 
the certain advance of popular interests, and demo- 
lition of all injurious power held by the few ; but 
I believed that more depended on single questions 
than was really involved in such, and that sepa- 
rate measures would be more comprehensive and 
complete than a dispassionate observer thinks pos- 
sible. In the midst of all this, you and I were 
taken apart ; and have not our eyes been opened 
to perceive, in the action of society, the continua- 
tion of the history we read so long ago ? I need 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 71 

scarcely allude to the progress of popular interests, 
and the unequalled rapidity with which some great 
questions are approaching to a settlement. We have 
a stronger tendency to speculate on the movements 
of the minds engaged in the transaction of affairs, 
than on the rate of advance of the affairs them- 
selves. With much that is mortifying and sad, 
and something that is amusing, how much is there 
instructive ! And how clear, as in a bird's-eye 
view of a battle, or as in the analysis of a wise 
speculative philosopher, is the process ! 

We see everybody that is busy doing what we 
did — overrating the immediate object. There is 
no sin in this, and no harm, however it proves 
incessantly the fallibility of human judgments. It 
is ordered by Him who constituted our minds and 
our duties, that our business of the hour should be 
magnified by the operation of our powers upon it. 
Without this, nothing would ever be done ; for 
every man's energy is no more than sufficient for 
his task ; and there would be a fatal abatement of 
energy, if a man saw his present employment in 
the proportion in which it must afterwards appear 
to other affairs, — the limitation and weakness of 
our pow r ers causing us to apprehend feebly the 



72 ESSAYS. 

details of what we see, when we endeavour to be 
comprehensive in our views. The truth seems to 
lie in a point of view different from either. I 
doubt whether it is possible for us to overrate the 
positive importance of what we are doing, though 
we are continually exaggerating its value in rela- 
tion to other objects of our own, while it seems 
pretty certain that we entertain an inadequate 
estimate of interests that we have dismissed, to 
make room for new ones. 

Next, we see the present operation of old libe- 
ralising causes so strong as to be irresistible ; men 
of all parties — or, at least, reasonable men of all 
parties — so carried along by the current of events, 
that it is scarcely now a question with any one 
what is the point towards which the vessel of the 
State is to be carried next, but how she is to be 
most safely steered amidst the perils which beset 
an ordained course. One party mourns that no 
great political hero rises up to retard the speed to 
a rate of safety ; and another party mourns that 
no great political hero presents himself to increase 
while guiding our speed by the inspiration of his 
genius ; while there are a few tranquil observers 
who believe that, glorious as would be the advent 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 73 

of a great political hero at any time, we could 
never better get on without one, because never 
before were principles so clearly and strongly 
compelling their own adoption, and working out 
their own results. They are now the masters, and 
not the servants, of Statesmen ; and inestimable 
as would be the boon of a great individual will, 
which should work in absolute congeniality with 
these powers, we may trust, for our safety and 
progress, in their dominion over all lesser wills. 

Next, we perceive, (and we ask whether some 
others can be as blind to it as they appear to be,) 
that a great change has taken place in the morals 
— at least, in the conventional morals, of States- 
manship. Consistency was once, and not long 
ago, a primary virtue in a Statesman, — consistency, 
not only in general principle and aims, through a 
whole public life, but in views of particular ques- 
tions. Now it has become far otherwise. The 
incurable bigots of political society are the only 
living politicians, except a very small number of 
so-called ultra-liberals, who can boast of unchanged 
views. Perhaps every public man of sense and 
honour has changed his opinions, on more or fewer 
questions, since he entered public life. It cannot be 

E 



74 ESSAYS. 

otherwise in a period of transition, in a monarchy 
where the popular element is rising, and the rulers 
are selected from the privileged classes alone. The 
virtue of such functionaries now is, not that their 
opinions remain stationary, and that their views 
remain consistent through a whole life, but that 
they can live and learn. 

And there are two ways of doing this — two kinds 
of men who do it. One kind of man has all his 
life believed that certain popular principles are for 
the good of society ; he now learns to extend this 
faith to measures which he once thought ultra and 
dangerous, and embraces these measures with an 
earnest heart, for their own value. Another sort of 
man has predilections opposed to these measures, 
laments their occurrence, and wishes the old state 
of affairs could have been preserved ; but he sees 
that it is impossible, — he sees the strength of the 
national will, and the tendency of events so united 
with these measures, that there is peril in resist- 
ance. He thinks it a duty to make a timely 
proposal and grant of them, rather than endanger 
the general allegiance and tranquillity by delay, 
refusal, or conflict. 

Now, though we may have our preferences in 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 



regard to such public men, we cannot impute guilt 
to either kind. We see that it is unjust to impute 
moral or political sin in either case. The great 
point of interest to you and me is to observe how 
such new necessities and methods work in society. 

The incurables of the privileged classes of course 
act after their kind. They are full of astonishment 
and feeble rage. The very small number of really 
philosophical liberals — once ultras, but now nearly 
overtaken by the times — see tranquilly the fulfil- 
ment of their anticipations, and anticipate still — how 
wisely, time will show. Of the two intermediate 
parties, the question is, which appears most able to 
live and learn ? From the start the liberals had ori- 
ginally, it would seem that they must hold the more 
dignified position of the two. But, judging them out 
of their own mouths, what can we think and say ? 

To us it appears a noble thing to apprehend 
truth early, not merely as a guess, but as a ground 
of opinion and action. A man who is capable of 
this is secure that his opinions will be embraced 
by more and more minds, till they become the 
universal belief of men. It is natural to him to 
feel satisfaction as the fellowship spreads — both 
because fellowship is pleasant to himself, and 

e 2 



76 ESSAYS. 

because the hour thereby draws nearer and nearer 
for society to be fully blessed with the truth which 
was early apparent to him. "When this truth 
becomes indisputable and generally diffused, and 
its related action takes place, his satisfaction should 
be complete. 

What an exception to this natural process, this 
healthy enjoyment, do we witness in the political 
transactions of the time ! Whatever may be 
thought of the consistency of the most rapidly 
progressive party, what can be said of the philo- 
sophy of the more early liberal ? At every advance 
of their former opponents, they are exasperated. 
They fight for every tardily-apprehended political 
truth as for a private property. They not only 
complain — " You thought the contrary in such a 
year ! " " Here are the words you spoke in such 
a year ; the reverse of what you say now ! " but 
they cry, on every declaration of conversion to one 
of their long- avowed opinions, " Hands off! that 
is my truth ; I got it so many years ago, and you 
shan't touch it ! " To you and me (to whom it is 
much the same thing to look back and to look 
abroad), it irresistibly occurs to ask whether it was 
thus in former transition-states of society ; whether, 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 77 

for instance, assured and long-avowed Christians 
exclaimed, on occasion of the conversion of en- 
lightened heathens — "You extolled Jupiter in 
such a year, and now you disparage him." "Be- 
member what you said of Diana no longer ago 
than such a year ! " " Do you think we shall 
admit you to our Christ ? He is ours these ten 
years ! " Those of us who believe and feel that 
the development of moral science (of which poli- 
tical is one department) is as progressive as that 
of physical, cannot but glance at the aspect of such 
conduct in relation to the discovery of a new 
chemical agency, or important heavenly body ; and 
then . . . But enough of such illustration. No- 
body doubts the absurdity, when fairly set down ; 
though the number of grown men who have, 
within three years, committed it daily in news- 
papers, clubs, markets, and the Houses of Parlia- 
ment, is so great as to be astonishing, till we 
discern the causes, proximate and final, of such 
unphilosophical discourse and demeanour. 

While in this conflict grave and responsible 
leaders grow factious — while men of purpose forget 
their march onward in side-skirmishes — while 
reformers lose sight of the imperishable quality of 



78 ESSAYS. 

their cause, and talk of hopeless corruption and 
inevitable destruction — how do affairs appear to 
us, in virtue merely of our being out of the strife ? 
We see that large principles are more extensively- 
agreed upon than ever before — more manifest to 
all eyes, from the very absence of a hero to work 
them, since they are every hour showing how 
irresistibly they are making their own way. "We 
see that the tale of the multitude is told as it never 
was told before-— their health, their minds and 
morals, pleaded for in a tone perfectly new in the 
world. We see that the dreadful sins and woes of 
society are the results of old causes, and that our 
generation has the honour of being responsible for 
their relief, while the disgrace of their existence 
belongs, certainly not to our time, and perhaps to 
none. We see that no spot of earth ever before 
contained such an amount of infallible resources as 
our own country at this day ; so much knowledge, 
so much sense, so much vigour, foresight, and 
benevolence, or such an amount of external means. 
We see the progress of amelioration, silent but 
sure, as the shepherd on the upland sees in the 
valley the advance of a gush of sunshine from 
between two hills. He observes what the people 






LIFE TO THE INVALID. 79 

below are too busy to mark : how the light attains 
now this object and now that — how it now embel- 
lishes yonder copse, and now gilds that stream, and 
now glances upon the roofs of the far-off hamlet — 
the signs and sounds of life quickening along its 
course. When we remember that this is the same 
sun that guided the first vessels of commerce over 
the sea — the same by whose light Magna Charta 
was signed in Eunnymede — that shone in the eyes 
of Cromwell after Naseby fight — that rose on 
800,000 free blacks in the West Indies on a certain 
August morning — and is now shining down into 
the dreariest recesses of the coal-mine, the prison, 
and the cellar — how can we doubt that darkness is 
to be chased away, and God's sunshine to vivify, 
at last, the whole of our world ? 

Is it necessary, some may ask, to be sick, and 
apart, to see and believe these things? Events 
seem to show that for some — for many — sequestra- 
tion from affairs is necessary to this end ; for there 
are not a few who, in the hubbub of party, have let 
go their faith, and have not to this moment found 
it again. If there are some in the throng who can 
at once act and anticipate faithfully, we may thank 
God for the blessing. But they are sadly few. 



80 ESSAYS. 

I have said how clearly appears to us the fact 
and the reason of every man's exaggerating at the 
moment the importance of the work under his 
hand. Not less clear is the ordination, as old and 
as continuous as human action, by which men fail, 
more or less, of obtaining their express objects, 
while all manner of unexpected good arises in a 
collateral way. It is usual to speak of the results 
of the labours of alchemists in this view, everybody 
seeing that while we still pick out our gold from 
the ground, we owe much to the alchemists that 
they never thought of. But the same is true of 
almost every object of human pursuit, and even 
of belief. No doubt we invalids keep up our 
likeness to our kind, in this respect, as far as we 
are able to act at all; but we have more time 
than others to contemplate the working of the plan 
on a large scale. Look at the projects, the dis- 
coveries, the quackeries of the day ! 

With regard to the projects, however, I am at 
present disposed to make one partial exception — 
to acknowledge, as far as I can at present see, one 
case of singularity. I mean with regard to the 
New Postage. The general rule proves true in one 
half of it, that many great and yet unascertained 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 81 

benefits are arising, of which the projector did not 
dream; so that a volume might be filled with 
anecdotes, curious to the spectator and delightful 
to the benevolent. But, thus far, it does not appear 
that any fallacy has mixed itself with the express 
expectations of the projector. I do not speak of 
the failure of his efforts to get his whole plan 
adopted. That will soon be a matter of small 
account — a disappointment and vexation gone 
by — a temporary trial of patience, forgotten except 
by the record. I mean that he has advanced no 
propositions which he does not seem perfectly able 
to prove, uttered no promises which do not appear 
certain to be fulfilled. This project is perhaps the 
noblest afloat in our country and time, considering 
the moral interests it involves. It is, perhaps, 
scarcely possible to exaggerate the force and 
extent of its civilising and humanising influences, 
especially in regard to its spreading the spirit of 
Home over all the occupations and interests of 
life, in defiance of the separating powers of distance 
and poverty ; and it will be curious if this enter- 
prise, besides keeping the school-child at his 
mother's bosom, the apprentice, the governess, and 
the maid-servant, at their father's hearth — and us 

e 3 



82 ESSAYS. 

sick or aged people entertained daily with the 
flowers, music, books, sentiment and news of the 
world we have left — should prove an exception to 
all others in performing all its express promises. At 
present, I own, this appears no matter of doubt. 

As for the discoveries or quackeries of the 
time, (and who will undertake to say in what 
instances they are not, sooner or later, com- 
pounded ?) how clear is the collateral good, what- 
ever may be the express failure ? Those who 
receive all the sayings of the Coryphaeus of the 
phrenologists, and those who laugh at his maps of 
the mind and his so-called ethics, must both admit 
that much knowledge of the structure of the brain, 
much wise care of human health and faculties, has 
issued from the pursuit, for the benefit of man. 
This Mesmerism again : who believes that it could 
be revived, again and again, at intervals of cen- 
turies, if there were not something in it ? Who 
looks back upon the mass of strange but authen- 
ticated historical narratives, which might be 
explained by this agent, and looks, at the same 
time, into our dense ignorance of the structure 
and functions of the nervous system, and will dare 
to say that there is nothing in it? Whatever 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 83 

quackery and imposture may be connected with it, 
however its pretensions may be falsified, it seems 
impossible but that some new insight must be 
obtained by its means, into the powers of our 
mysterious frame — some fixing down under actual 
cognizance, of flying and floating notions, full of 
awe, which have exercised the belief and courage 
of many wise, for many centuries. 

After smiling over old books all our lives, on 
meeting with quaint assumptions of the Humoral 
pathology as true, while we supposed it exploded — 
behold it arising again ! One cannot open a 
newspaper, scarcely a letter, without seeing some- 
thing about the Water-cure ; and grave doctors, 
who will listen to nothing the laity can say of 
anything new, (any more than they would tolerate 
the mention of the circulation of the blood in 
Harvey's day,) now intimate that the profession 
are disposed to believe that there is more in the 
humoral pathology than was thought thirty years 
ago, though not so much as the water-carers 
presume. Is it not pretty certain, then, that some- 
thing will come of this rage for the water- 
cure, (something more than ablution, temperance, 
and exercise,) though its professors must be em- 



84 ESSAYS. 

balmed as quacks in the literature of the time ? Is 
there not still another operation of the same 
principle involved in the case ? Are we not 
growing sensibly more merciful, more wisely- 
humane towards empirics themselves, when they 
cease to be our oracles ? Are we not learning, 
from their jumbled discoveries and failures, that 
empiricism itself is a social function, indispensable, 
made so by God, however ready we may be to 
bestow our cheap laughter upon it ? To us retired 
observers of life there is too much of this easy 
mockery for our taste, or for the morals of society. 
Ours seems to be an age when it is to the credit of 
others, besides statesmen, that they can live and 
learn ; and there is no getting on in our learning 
without empiricism. It is less wise than easy to 
ridicule its connection with non-essential modes 
and appearances prescribed or suggested by the 
passions, needs, or follies of the time. It is most 
wise, and should be easy, to have faith that the 
determining conditions of all experimental disco- 
very will be ascertained in due season. If, mean- 
while, we can obtain from the magnetisers any 
light as to any function of the nervous system, 
we may excuse them from the performance of 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. bo 

some promised feats. If the Homoeopathists 
can help us to any new principle of natural anta- 
gonism to disease, they may well abide the laugh 
which I am not aware that the serious of their 
number have ever provoked by any extreme and 
unsupported pretensions. 

But at this rate, occupying this scope, I shall 
never have done. I might write on for every day 
of my life, and be no nearer the end of our specu- 
lations. Let what I have said go for specimens of 
our observation of life in two or three particulars. 
When I think of what I have seen with my own 
eyes from one back window, in the few years of 
my illness ; of how indescribably clear to me are 
many truths of life from my observation of the 
doings of the tenants of a single row of houses ; 
it seems to me scarcely necessary to see more than 
the smallest sample, in order to analyse life in its 
entireness. I could fill a volume — and an interest- 
ing one too — with a simple detail of what I have 
witnessed, as I said, from one back-window. But 
I must tell nothing. These two or three little 
courts and gardens ought to be as sacred as any 
interior. Nothing of the spy shall mix itself with 



86 ESSAYS. 

my relation to neighbours who have ever been 
kind to me. Suffice it, that if I saw no further 
into the world with the mental than with the bodily 
eye, I should be kept in a state of perpetual 
wonder, (of pleasing wonder, on the whole,) at 
the operation of the human heart and mind, in its 
most ordinary circumstances. Nothing can be 
more ordinary than the modes of life which I 
overlook, yet am I kept wide awake in my watch 
by ever new instances of the fulness of pleasure 
derivable from the scantiest sources ; of the vivid- 
ness of emotion excitable by the most trifling inci- 
dents; of the wonderful power pride has of pam- 
pering itself upon the most meagre food ; and, 
above all, of the infinite ingenuity of human love. 
Nothing, perhaps, has impressed me so deeply as 
the clear view I have of almost all, if not quite the 
whole, of the suffering I have witnessed being the 
consequence of vice or ignorance. But when my 
heart has sickened at the sight, and at the thought 
of so much gratuitous pain, it has grown strong again 
in the reflection that, if unnecessary, this misery 
is temporary, — that the true ground of mourning 
would be if the pain were not from causes which 
are remediable. Then I cannot but look forward 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. S7 

to the time when the bad training of children, — 
the petulancies of neighbours — the errors of the 
menage — the irksome superstitions, and the seduc- 
tions of intemperance, shall all have been annihi- 
lated by the spread of intelligence, while the mirth 
at the minutest jokes — the proud plucking of nose- 
gays — the little neighbourly gifts, (less amusing 
hereafter, perhaps, in their taste)— the festal obser- 
vances — the disinterested and refined acts of self- 
sacrifice and love, will remain as long as the 
human heart has mirth in it, or a humane com- 
placency and self-respect, — as long as its essence 
is what it has ever been, " but a little lower than 
the angels." 

How is it possible to give an idea of what the 
gradual disclosure of the fates of individuals is to 
us ? In reading chronicles, and the lighter kinds 
of history, we have all found ourselves eagerly 
watching the course of love and domestic life, and 
pausing over the winding up, at death, of the lot 
of personages whose mere names were all the 
interest we began with. To us, in the monotony 
of our lives, it seems as if other people's lives 
slipped away with the rapidity with which we 



88 ESSAYS. 

read a book, while the interest we feel is that of 
personal knowledge. It is as if Time himself 
were present unseen, whispering to us of a new 
kindled love, — of marriage, with all its details of 
"pomp and circumstance;" and then comes the 
deeper social interest, — the opening of a glimpse 
into the vista of new generations, while all around 
the other interests of life are transacting, and the 
children we knew at their parents' knees are 
abroad in the world, acting for themselves, and 
putting a hand to the destinies of society. 

Of all the announcements made in the silence 
of our solitude, none are so striking as those of 
deaths, familiar as the thought of death is to us, 
and natural as our own death would appear to our- 
selves, and to everybody. To present witnesses, 
and in the midst of the activity of life, the spec- 
tacle of death loses half its force. It is we who 
feel the awful beauty of it, when the great 
Recorder intimates to us that they who were 
strenuous in mutual conflict have lain down side 
by side ; that to old age its infirmities matter no 
longer, as the body itself is surrendered ; that the 
weary spirit of care is at rest, and that the most 
active affections and occupations of life have been 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. S9 

brought to a sudden close. Many young and busy 
persons wish, as I used to wish, that Time would 
be prophet as well as watchman. On Xew Year's 
Eves, such long to divine how many, and who of 
those they know, will be smitten and withdrawn 
during the coming year. AVe, in our solitude, do 
not desire to forestal the unrolling of the scroll. 
To ponder the register of the year's deaths at its 
close, is enough for us, to whom our seclusion 
serves for all purposes of speculation. "While we 
are waiting, every year conveys away before us 
the infant, fa new immortality created before our 
eyes): the busy citizen, or indispensable mother, 
(showing how much more important in the eye of 
God is it what we are than what we do : I the vouns; 
maiden, full of sympathy, (perhaps for us,) and of 
hope : and the aged, full of years, but perhaps not 
less of life. Such is the register of every year at 
its close. 

To us, whose whole life is sequestered, — who 
see nothing of the events of which we hear 
so much, or see them only as gleam or shadow 
passing along our prison-walls, there is something 
indescribably affecting in the act of regarding 
History, Life, and Speculation as one. All are 



90 ESSAYS. 

enhanced to us by their melting into each other. 
History becomes like actual life; life becomes 
comprehensive as history, and abstract as specula- 
tion. Not only does human life, from the cradle 
to the grave, lie open to us, but the whole succes- 
sion of generations, without the boundary line of 
the past being interposed; and with the very 
clouds of the future so thinned, — rendered so 
penetrable, as that we believe we discern the 
salient and bright points of the human destiny yet 
to be revealed. 

It would be impossible to set down, within any 
moderate limits, notices of changes in the Modes 
of life, — modes arising from progressive civilisa- 
tion, and deeply affecting morals ; — but there is 
one branch of one great change, which I will 
mention, as it bears a relation to the morals of the 
sick-room. 

We all know how the present action of our new 
civilisation works to the impairing of Privacy. As 
new discoveries are causing all-penetrating phy- 
sical lights so to abound as that, as has been said, 
we shall soon not know where in the world to get 
any darkness, so our new facilities for every sort 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 91 

of communication work to reduce privacy much 
within its former limits. There are some limits, 
however, which ought to be preserved with vigil- 
ance and care, as indispensable, not only to com- 
fort, but to some of the finest virtues and graces 
of mind and life. 

It is to be hoped that the privacy of viva voce 
conversation will ever remain sacred : but it is 
known that that which ought to be as holy, that 
of epistolary correspondence, — (the private con- 
versation of distant friends,) is constantly and deli- 
berately violated, where there are certain induce- 
ments to do so. The press works so diligently and 
beneficially for society at large, that there is a 
tendency to commit everything to it, on utilitarian 
considerations of a rather coarse kind: and the 
moment it can be made out that the publication of 
anything will and may do some ostensible good, 
the thing is published, — whatever considerations 
of a different or a higher sort may lie behind. If 
the people of note in society were inquired of, 
they would say that the privilege — the right — of 
privacy of epistolary correspondence now exists 
only for the obscure ; — and for them, only till 
some person meets them whose zeal for the public 



92 ESSAYS. 

good leads him to lay hold on all material by 
which anybody may be supposed likely to learn 
anything. As for people of note, — their letters 
are naturally preserved by the recipients : when 
the writer dies, these recipients are plied with 
entreaties and remonstrances, — placed in a posi- 
tion of cruel difficulty (as it is to many) between 
their delicacy of affection for the deceased, and 
the pain of being made responsible for intercept- 
ing his fame, and depriving society of the benefit 
of the disclosure of his living mind. 

Under this state of things, what happens ? 
Some destroy, through life, all the letters they 
receive, but those on business. Some, with an 
agonising heart, burn them after the writer's 
death, to escape the requisitions of executors. 
Many, alas ! resign their privilege of freedom of 
epistolary speech, and write no letters which any 
one would care to preserve for an hour. Some 
call in their own letters ; — a painful process, both 
to writer and receivers. Of such as do not care 
what becomes of their letters, there is no need to 
say anything. Their feelings require no con- 
sideration, for their letters cannot be of a private, 
—nor, therefore, of the most valuable kind. The 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 93 

misery of the liability is in regard to letters of 
affection and confidence, — letters which the writer 
could no more bear to see again than to have 
notes taken of the out-pourings of his heart in an 
hour of confidence. It is too certain that many 
such letters are now never written which crave to 
be so : and it is much to be feared that some 
letters, purporting to be private, are written with 
a view to ultimate publication ; and thus the re- 
ceiver is insulted, or there is a sacrifice of honesty 
all round. 

I do not see any probability of a dearth of 
biographies. I believe that there will always be 
interest enough in human life and character to 
secure a sufficiency of records of individuals : — 
that there will always be enough of persons whose 
letters are not of a very private kind, — always 
enough of provided and exceptional cases to serve 
society with a sufficiency of biography, of a duly 
analytical kind. But if I did not believe this, — if 
I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice 
of the completest order of biography and that of 
the inviolability of private epistolary correspond- 
ence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I would 
keep the old and precious privacy, — the inestim- 



94 ESSAYS. 

able right of every one who has a friend and can 
write to him ; — I would keep our written confi- 
dence from being made biographical material, as 
anxiously as I would keep our spoken conversa- 
tion from being noted down for the good of 
society. I would keep the power of free speech 
under all the influences of life and fate, — and 
leave Biography to exist or perish. 

And pretty sure it is of existence. It has, for 
its material, the life and actions of all men and 
women of note ; — their printed and otherwise 
public writings and sayings ; — the recollections of 
those who knew them ; and, in no small number 
of cases, material which, however we may wonder 
at, we have only to take and be thankful for. A 
Doddridge keeps a copy of every letter or note 
he ever wrote, labelled and put by for posthumous 
use. A D'Arblay spends her last hours in elabo- 
rating her revelations of the transactions, private 
and public, of her day ; and revises, for publica- 
tion, the expressions of fondness and impulse, 
written to sisters and other intimates, long dead. 
A Rousseau here and there gives more. One 
way and another, the resources of biography are 
secure enough, without encroachment on a sacred 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 95 

process of intercourse. Biography will never 
fail. Would that we were all equally secure of a 
higher matter, — our right of freedom of epistolary 
speech ! 

" But when all are dead, — and nobody con- 
cerned remains to be hurt ?" remonstrates one. 
The reply is, that as long as people of note, who 
love their friends, remain, there are some left to 
be concerned and injured. 

" But," says another, " would you object 
to do good, after your death, by your letters 
being published ?" The reply is that, in the 
supposition, I see an enormous sacrifice of a 
higher and greater good to a lower and smaller. 
Xo letters, in any number and of any quality, 
— if they exhibited all the wisdom of Solomon, 
and all the graces of the Queen of Sheba, could 
do so much good as a single clear and strong 
protest against the preservation of strictly private 
letters for biographical material. 

" But," says another, " had you not better 
leave the matter to the discretion of survivors ? 
Surely you can trust your executors ; — surely you 
can trust the friends who will survive you." The 
reply is — when this critical state of our morals is 



96 ESSAYS. 

past, no doubt executors may be trusted about 
letters, as about other matters. But the very 
point of the case is that its morality is not yet 
ascertained by those who do not suffer under the 
liability, and have not fellow-feeling with those 
who do. My executors may very sincerely think 
it their duty to publish my most private letters, — 
and even to be now laying them by in order for 
the purpose : while I feel that, once aroused to a 
view of the liability, I could more innocently 
leave to the discretion of survivors the disposition 
of lands and money than that of my private utter- 
ances to my friends. In a case of differing or 
opposing views of duty, — if my own is clear and 
stringent, I cannot innocently leave the matter to 
the chance of other persons' convictions. There 
cannot be a more strictly personal duty, and I 
must do it myself. 

I have, therefore, done it. Having made the 
discovery of the preservation of my letters for 
purposes of publication hereafter, I have ascer- 
tained my own legal rights, and acted upon them. 
I have adopted legal precautions against the pub- 
lication of my private letters ; — I have made it a 
condition of my confidential correspondence that 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 97 

my letters shall not be preserved : and I have 
been indulged by my friends, generally, with an 
acquiescence in my request that my entire corre- 
spondence, except such as relates to business, shall 
be destroyed. Of course, I do as I would be 
done by. The privacy I claim for myself, I care- 
fully guard for others. I keep no letters of a 
private and passing nature. I know that others 
are thinking and acting with me. We enjoy, by 
this provision, a freedom and fulness of epistolary 
correspondence which could not possibly exist if 
the press loomed in the distance, or executors' 
eyes were known to be in wait hereafter. Our 
correspondence has all the flow and lightness of 
the most secret talk. This is a present reward, 
and a rich one, for the effort and labour of making 
our views and intentions understood. But it is 
not our only reward. We perceive that we have 
fixed attention upon what is becoming an import- 
ant point of Morals : and we feel, in our inmost 
hearts, that we have done what we could to guard 
from encroachment an important right, and from 
destruction a precious privilege. This may ap- 
pear a strange statement to persons whose privacy 
is safe in their obscurity. Those who know in 



ESSAYS. 



their own experience the liabilities of fame, will 
understand, and deeply feel, what I have said. 

I have mentioned above, that, to us in seclusion, 
History, Life, and Speculation, assume a continuity 
such as would not have been believed possible by 
ourselves in former days, when they appeared to 
constitute departments of study as separate as 
moral studies can be. It would be curious and 
interesting to an observer of the human mind, to 
pass from retreat to retreat, and watch the progress 
of this fusion of objects ; to see the formerly busy 
member of society — " the practical man, " — 
growing speculative in his turn of thought ; the 
speculative writer nourishing more and more of 
an antiquarian taste ; and the antiquary finding 
seclusion serve as well as the passage of ages, and 
viewing the modes and instruments of the life of 
to-day with the eye and the gusto of the antiquary 
of ten centuries hence. 

And not only in their studies would men of 
such differing tastes be found to be brought together 
under the influences of sequestration from the 
world. There are matters of moral perception and 
taste in which they would draw near no less 
remarkably. The one conspicuous, undying 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 99 

humanity, which is the soul of all the forms of life 
that they contemplate, must be, to all, the sun 
of their intellectual day, beneath whose penetra- 
ting light all adventitious distinctions melt into 
insignificance. Distinctions of rank, for instance, 
become attenuated to a previously inconceivable 
degree. To the antiquary, as well as to the 
most radical speculator, there would be little more 
in the sovereign entering the sick-room than any 
other stranger whom kindness might bring. It 
requires that we should live in the midst of the 
arrangements of society, that our conventional 
ideas should be nourished by daily associations, 
in order to keep up even the remembrance of 
differences of hereditary rank, so overpowering in 
our view are the great interests of life which are 
common to all, — Duty, Thought, Love, Joy, 
Sorrow, and Death. 

If the sovereign were to enter our rooms, there 
would be strong interests and affections connected 
with her, but interests relating to her responsi- 
bilities and her destinies, and scarcely at all to 
her rank — to the singularity, and not the exalta- 
tion, of her position. It is a strong doubt to me, 
whether one of high degree, placed in our circum- 

f2 



100 ESSAYS. 

stances, could long retain aristocratic ideas and 
tendencies; whether to the proudest noble, shut 
up in his chamber for five years, the cottage child 
he sees from his window, the footboy who brings 
his fuel, must not necessarily become as imposing 
to his imagination and his heart as the young 
princes of the blood. 

Something of the same process takes place, even 
with regard to the distinctions of intellectual 
nobility. As for the nothingness of literary fame, 
amidst the stress of personal trial (except in 
the collateral benefits it brings), an hour in the 
sick-room might convince the most superstitious 
worshipper of celebrity. As for the rest ; in the 
presence of the general ignorance, on the brink 
of that black abyss, our best lights are really so 
ineffectual, that it is impossible to pride ourselves 
on our intellectual differences, ranging merely 
as from the torch to the farthing candle. 

In truth, in our retreat, moral considerations 
are all in all. Moral distinctions are the chief; 
and moral interests, common to all, are supreme. 
They are so from their essential nature ; and they 
are so to us especially, from the singular advantage 
of our position for seeing their beauty, and the 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 101 

abundance of it. We could make known — what 
is little suspected by busy stirrers in the world, 
and wholly disbelieved by despondent moralists 
who dwell amidst its apparent confusion — that 
there is a deep heaven lying inclosed in the very 
centre of society, and a genuine divinity residing 
in the heart of every member of it, which might, 
if we would but recognise it. check our longing 
to leave the present scene, to search for God and 
Heaven elsewhere. All that is most frivolous 
and insignificant is ever most noisy and obtrusive: 
all that is most wicked is most boastful and 
audacious : all that is worst in men, and society. 
has a tendency to come uppermost ; and thus the 
most superficial observers of life are the most 
despondent. Meantime, whatever is holy, pure, 
and peaceable, works silently and unremittingly : 
and while turbulent passions are exhausting them- 
selves before the eyes of men, a calm and perpetual 
renovation is spreading outwards from the central 
heart of humanity. I have the image before my 
eyes at this moment — the awful type of the blessed 
reality — in the tossing sea, which the neighbours 
dare hardly look upon. It rages and rolls, it 
dashes the drift-wood on the shore, and heaw 



102 ESSAYS. 

squalls come driving over it, like messengers of 
dismay. At this very instant, how calm are its 
depths ! There light dwells, as long as there is 
light in heaven; and there is no end to the 
treasures of beauty on which it shines. If it be a 
fable that there are happy beings dwelling there, 
basking and singing, unconscious of the tempests 
overhead, it is certainly true that it is thus in the 
upper world, of which the ocean is a type. It is 
true, as a friend said to me, that " the dark is full 
of beautiful things." Without an image, speaking 
in the plainest and most absolute terms, the least 
known parts of human life are full of moral beauty. 
I am fully persuaded, that, if we wish to extend 
and confirm our ideas of Heaven, we should not 
wander back and afar to the old Eden, or forward 
and upward to some bright star of the firmament, 
but we should look into the retired places of our 
own actual world, of our own country, of our own 
town and village. We should look into the faces 
to be met in the street every day ; we should look 
round by the light of our common sun. However, 
my immediate business is to say that we, who are 
not abroad in the streets, and cannot go in bodily 
presence into the by-places of life, have more of 



LIFE TO THE INVALID. 103 

this heaven disclosed to us than others, because 
we appear to need it more. If any one of us could 
and might tell what we know of the good of 
human hearts, the heavenly deeds of human hands, 
the desponding would hang their heads no longer 
with fear, but with shame for their fear. If I 
alone might make a record of the heavenly aspects 
which have been presented in this one room, such 
a record would extinguish all revilings of man 
and of life. And when I think that what has 
appeared to me must, in natural course, have 
appeared to all my companions in infirmity, when 
I gather into one all these revelations of the real 
moral life of society, I perceive that, till death 
satisfies us in regard to a local heaven, we may 
well be satisfied with that which lies all round 
about us — not mute, while tender and pitying 
voices speak to us; nor wholly unseen, while 
tearful or kindling eyes meet our own. 

Thus, in some few of its leading aspects, does 
Life appear to the invalid. 



104 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 



" To smell a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body ; no less are the 
thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul." Fuller. 

" And yet as angels, in some brighter dreams, 
Call to the soul when man doth sleep, 
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, 
And into glory peep." Henhy Vaughan. 



What subject is so interesting to the full of 
life as that of death ? What taste is so universal 
in childhood and youth as that for learning all 
that can be known of the thoughts and feelings of 
the dying ? Did we not all, in our young days, 
turn to the death part in all biographies ; to the 
death articles in all cyclopsedias ; to the discourses 
on sickness and death in all sermon books ; to the 
prayers in the prospect of death in all books of 
devotion ? Do not the most common-place writers 
of fiction crowd their novels with death scenes, 
and indifferent tragedy writers kill off almost all 
their characters ? Do not people crowd to execu- 
tions ; and do not those who stay at home learn all 
they can of the last words and demeanour of the 



sufferers ? Are not the visions of heroic children, 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 105 

(and of many grown children), chiefly about pain 
and a noble departure ? Is there any curiosity 
more lively than that which we all feel about the 
revelations of persons resuscitated from drowning I 
Is it not their nearer position to death which 
makes sick persons so awful to children who are 
not familiar with them, — so interesting a subject 
of speculation to all ? How is it then with the 
invalids themselves ? 

Nothing need be said here of short, sharp, fatal 
illness. Most of us know that short, sharp ill- 
nesses, not fatal, have not enlightened us much 
in regard to death and its appropriate feelings. 
Either pain or exhaustion usually causes, in such 
cases, an apathy which leaves nothing to be 
remembered or revealed. I was once told by a 
child, after some hours of exhausting pain, what 
she had overheard below, — that if some contin- 
gency, which she specified, did not arise, I should 
die before night. I fully believed it ; and I felt 
nothing, unless it were some wonder at feeling 
nothing. Almost every person has a similar 
anecdote to tell ; and there remains only the 
short and pregnant moral, that all preparations 
for leaving this life, and entering on the next, 

f3 



106 ESSAYS. 

should be made while the body is well and the 
spirit alive. 

But how does death appear to those who rest 
half-way between it and life, or are very gradually 
passing over from the one to the other ? 

Much depends, of course, on how far the vital 
forces are impaired — on whether the condition be 
such as to obscure or to purify the spiritual vision. 
If we want to know the effect of nearness and 
realisation, and not the pathology of the case, we 
must suppose the vital powers to remain faithful, 
however they may be weakened. 

In such cases, I imagine the views of death 
remain much what they were before, though they 
must necessarily become more interesting, and the 
conception of them more clear. I know of no 
case of any one who before believed, or took for 
granted, a future life, who began to disbelieve or 
doubt it through sickness. I have known cases of 
those who disbelieved it in health, seeing no 
reason to change their opinion on the approach of 
death, — being content to have lived — satisfied to 
leave life when its usefulness and pleasantness are 
gone — not desiring a renewal of it, but ready to 
awake again at the word of their Creator, if indeed 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 107 

a farther existence be in reserve for them. Such 
cases I have known: but none of a material 
change of views in the prospect of death. 

To me, the presumption of the inextinguishable 
vitality of the spirit afforded by the experience of 
material decay, is the strongest I am acquainted 
with. No amount of evidence of any fact before 
the reason, no demonstration of any truth to the 
understanding, affords to me such a sense of cer- 
tainty as the action of the spirit yields, with regard 
to its own immortality, at times when there can 
be no deception from animal spirits, or from 
immediate sympathy with other minds, or from 
what is called the natural desire for life. It is a 
mistake to say, as is frequently said, that, with 
regard to a future life, " the wish is father to the 
thought," always or generally. Long-suffering 
invalids can tell that there are seasons, neither 
few nor short, when the wishes are all the other 
way, — when life is so oppressive to the frame that 
the happiest news would be that we should soon 
be non-existent, — when, thankful as we are that 
our beloved friends, the departed and the remain- 
ing, are to live for evermore with God, and enjoy 
his universe and its intercourses, we should be 



108 ESSAYS. 

glad to decline it for ourselves, and to lie down 
in an eternal, unbroken rest. At these seasons, 
when, though we know all that can be said of 
renewed powers and relish, and a more elevated 
and privileged life beyond the grave, we cannot 
feel it ; and, while admitting all such consolations 
as truth, we cannot enjoy them, but, as a mere 
matter of inclination, had rather resign our privi- 
leges; — in these seasons, when the wish would be 
father to an opposite thought, the belief in our 
immortality is at the strongest; the truth of our 
inability to die becomes overwhelming, and the 
sleep of the grave appears too light to satisfy our 
need of rest. I believe it to be owing to this 
natural and unconquerable belief in our immor- 
tality, that suicide is not more common than it is 
among sufferers. I am persuaded that the almost 
intolerable weariness of long sicknesses, unre- 
lieved by occasional fits of severe pain, would 
impel many to put out a hand to the laudanum- 
bottle, in hours when religious considerations and 
emotions cannot operate through the indisposition 
of the frame, if it were not for the intense convic- 
tion that life would not thus be extinguished, nor 
even suspended. I do not believe much in the 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 109 

"natural love of life/' which is usually said to 
be the preventive in such cases. I do believe in 
the vast operation of religious affections in with- 
holding from the act : but I also believe in frequent 
instances of abstinence from death, from a mere 
despair of getting rid of life — a sense of necessary 
immortality. 

I have spoken of the relief afforded by visita- 
tions of severe pain. These rally the vital forces, 
and dismiss the temptation, by substituting torture 
for weariness — at times a welcome change. The 
healthy are astonished at the good spirits of suffer- 
ers under tormenting complaints ; and the most 
strait-laced preachers of fortitude and patience 
admit an occasional wonder that there is no 
suicide among that class of sufferers. The truth 
is, however, that the influence of acute pain, when 
only occasional, and not extremely protracted, is 
vivifying and cheering on the whole. The imme- 
diate anguish causes a temporary despair : but the 
reaction, when the pain departs, causes a relish of 
life such as the healthy and the gay hardly enjoy. 
Though a slow death by a torturing disease is a 
lot unspeakably awful to meet, and even to con- 
template, there can be no question to the expe- 



110 ESSAYS. 

rienced, that illness in which severe pain some- 
times occurs is less trying than some in which a 
different kind of suffering is not relieved by such 
a stimulus and its consequent sensations. 

Thus much it is useful to know, — useful to the 
student of human nature, to the nurse, and to a 
sufferer under sentence of lasting disease. But 
instances have been known, perplexing to those 
inexperienced in pain, of devout thankfulness for 
the suffering itself, under its immediate and ago- 
nising pressure ; and this in men far superior to 
the superstition of believing present pain the 
purchase-money of future ease, — the fine paid 
down here for admission to heavenly benefits 
hereafter. 

Strange as this rejoicing in misery may appear, 
it is to some minds as natural and authorised by 
the laws of our being, as the joy which attends the 
acquisition of a great idea, or the verification of a 
potent truth. It is . as verification that such pain 
is welcome. To men of the most spiritual tone of 
mind, every attestation of the reality of unseen 
objects is a boon of the highest order; and no 
such attestation can surpass in clearness that 
which is afforded by the sensible progress of decay 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. Ill 

in the material part of the sufferer's frame. All 
attempt at description is here vain. Nothing but 
experience can convey a conception of the intense 
reality in which God appears supreme, Christ and 
his gospel divine, and holiness the one worthy 
aim and chief good, when our frame is refusing its 
offices, and we can lay hold on no immediate 
outward support and solace. It is conceivable to 
the healthy and happy, that, if waked up from 
sleep by a tremendous earthquake, the first recoil 
of terror might be followed by an intense percep- 
tion of the fixity and tranquillity of the spiritual 
world, in immediate contact with the turbulence 
of the outward and lower scene. It is conceivable 
to us all that the drowning man may, as is re- 
corded, see his whole life, in all its minute details, 
presented to him, as in clear vision, in one instant 
of time, as he lapses into death. Well, — some- 
thing like both these experiences is that of extreme 
and dissolving pain, to a certain order of minds. 
The vision and the attestation are present, without 
the horrors caused, amidst an earthquake, by the 
misery of a perishing multitude, though at the 
cost of more bodily anguish than in the case of 
the drowning man. Though there may be keen 



112 



ESSAYS. 



doubts in a modest sufferer how long such anguish 
can be decently endured, — whether the filial sub- 
mission will hold out against torment,— there is 
through, above and beyond such doubts, so over- 
powering an impression of the vitality of the 
conscious part of us, and of the reality of the 
highest objects for which it was created and has 
lived, — so inexpressible a sense of the value of 
what we have prayed for, and of the evanescence 
of what we are losing,— that it is no wonder if the 
dying have been known to call for aid in their 
thanksgivings, and to struggle for sympathy even 
in their incommunicable convictions. If the 
shadows of the dark valley part, and disclose to 
such an one the regions that lie in the light of 
God's countenance, it is no wonder that he calls 
on those near him to look and see, though he is 
making the transit alone. 

Those who speculate outside on the experience 
of the sick-room, are eager to know whether this 
solitary transit is often gone over in imagination, and 
whether with more or less relish and success than 
by those at ease and in full vigour. In my child- 
hood, I attended, as an observer, one fine morning, 
at the funeral of a person with whom I was well 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 113 

acquainted, without feeling any strong affection. 
I was somewhat moved by the solemnity, and by 
the tears of the family ; but the most powerful 
feeling of the day was excited when the evening 
closed in, gusty and rainy, and I thought of the 
form I knew so well, left alone in the cold and the 
darkness, while everybody else was warm and 
sheltered. I felt that, if I had been one of the 
family, I could not have neglectfully and selfishly 
gone to bed that night, but must have passed the 
hours till daylight by the grave. Every child has 
felt this : and every child longs to know whether 
a sick friend contemplates that first night in the 
cold grave, and whether the prospect excites any 
emotions. 

Surely ; — we do contemplate it — frequently — 
eagerly. In the dark night, we picture the whole 
scene, under every condition the imagination can 
originate. By day, we hold up before our eyes 
that most wondrous piece of our worldly wealth— 
our own right-hand ; examine its curious texture 
and mechanism, and call up the image of its sure 
deadness and decay. And with what emotions ? 
Each must answer for himself. As for me, it is 
with mere curiosity, and without any concern 



114 ESSAYS. 

about the lonely, cold grave. I doubt whether 
any one's imagination rests there, — whether there 
is ever any panic about the darkness and the worm 
of the narrow house. 

As for our real future home, — the scene where 
our living selves are to be, — how is it possible that 
we should not be often resorting thither in 
imagination, when it is to be our next excursion 
from our little abode of sickness and helplessness, — 
when it is so certain that we cannot be disap- 
pointed of it, however wearily long it may be 
before we go,— -when all that has been best in our 
lives, our sabbaths, all sunset evenings and starry 
nights, all our reverence and love that are sancti- 
fied by death, — when all these things have always 
pointed to our future life and been associated with 
it, how is it possible that we should not be ever 
looking forward to it, now when our days are low 
and weary, and our pleasures few ? The liability 
is to too great familiarity with the subject. When 
our words make children look abashed, and call 
a constraint over the manners of those we are 
conversing with, and cause even the most familiar 
eyes to be averted, we find ourselves reminded 
that the subject of a person's death is one usually 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 115 

thought not easy to discuss with him. In our 
retirement, we are apt to forget, till expressly re- 
minded, the importance of distinctions of rank 
and property in society, so nearly as they vanish 
in our survey of life, in comparison with moral 
differences ; and, in like manner, we have to recal 
an almost lost idea, that death is an awkward 
topic, except in the abstract, when our casual 
mention of a will, or of some transaction to follow 
our death, introduces an awe and constraint into 
conversation. 

Such familiarity may be, and often is, con- 
demned as presumptuous. There may be cases 
in which it is so ; but I think it would be hard to 
make the censure general. The confident reckon- 
ing on the joys of heaven for one's self, on any 
grounds, while others are supposed to be con- 
demned to a contrary lot, is a superstition more 
offensive to my feelings than that which renders a 
trembling soul, clinging to life, aghast at the idea 
of meeting its Maker and Father. But a soul 
without any self-complacency, or ignorant confi- 
dence, may yet be easy and eager in the prospect 
of entering upon that awful new scene. Setting 
aside all the inducements from the hope of relief 



116 ESSAYS. 

and rest, the humblest spirit may be conceived of 
as tranquil and aspiring in full view of the transi- 
tion ; and this under a full sense of its sins and 
failures, and without reliance on any imaginary 
security, — without need of other reliance than its 
Father in Heaven. There may be — there is — 
in some, so continual a regard to God in life, that 
there cannot seem anything very new and strange 
in going anywhere where He is. There may be — 
and there is — in some, so earnest a desire to be 
purified from sin, that they would undergo anything 
on earth to be freed from it, and therefore fear 
nothing, but rather welcome any discipline which 
may be reserved beyond. Knowing that the 
revelation of the evil of their sin must be most 
painful, but also most necessary to their progress, 
they are ready, even eager for it, pressing forward 
to the suffering through which they hope to be 
made perfect. If with such dispositions is joined 
that ardent, reverential filial love which gene- 
rates perfect trust, and rejects any interposition 
between itself and the benign countenance in 
whose light it lives, there may be nothing blame- 
able or dangerous in the readiness for death, or in 
the happy familiarity with which the event may 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 117 

be spoken of. It is a case in which every man 
should be slow to judge his neighbour, while the 
natural verdict of thoughtful observers would 
seem to be that a sufferer under irremediable 
illness, who preserves a general patience, cares for 
others' happiness more than for his own, and has 
always lived in view of an eternal life, can hardly 
be wrong in anticipating that life with ease and 
cheerfulness, whatever analysis or judgment 
dogmatists may make of his state of mind. 

Whether our imaginings of Death are more or 
less a true anticipation of it, can be proved only 
by experience. It may be found that they are 
no more just than my idea of the matter when I 
was a child, when my brother and I dug a grave, 
and then lay down in it, by turns, and shut our 
eyes, to try what dying was like. Practically, 
such failures of conception cannot matter much. 
A person who is setting out on foreign travel for 
the first time, takes no harm by expecting the 
voyage and the landing among foreigners to be 
something very unlike what they prove. His 
preconceptions answered their purpose, by ren- 
dering him ready and willing to go, and prevent- 
ing his being taken by surprise by the summons. 



118 



ESSAYS. 



Still, those of us have greatly the advantage 
whose minds are enlarged by knowledge, and 
their imaginations animated and strengthened by 
exercise. Some of the most innocent and kind- 
hearted people I have known have been the most 
afraid of death, — not from consciousness of sin, 
but from dread of overpowering novelty — from a 
horror of feeling lost among scenes where there is 
nothing familiar ; while, in opposite cases, a phi- 
losophic interest and wonder have been known to 
go far in reconciling a highly intellectual man 
to leaving the companions he loved best in life. 

There can be no question as to the difference 
in the ease of departure (moral conditions being 
supposed the same) of the housewife, whose 
days and faculties have been occupied with the 
market, the shop, and the home where her 
whole life has been passed, and the philoso- 
pher, whose nerves thrill with delight, unmixed 
with terror, at the very first view of the new 
wonders revealed by Lord Eosse's speculum. It 
is striking, that a man about to be thrust forth from 
life for a plot of murder on an enormous scale, 
should, while waiting for death the next moment, 
whisper to a fellow-sufferer, " Now we shall soon 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 119 

know the great secret ;" while a pure and bene- 
ficent being, beloved by God and his neighbour, 
should pray to be loaded with any weight of years 
and sufferings rather than go from the familiar 
scene on which he has opened his eyes every day 
for sixty years. " Grand secrets" have no charms 
for him, but only horrors ; and as for new scenes, 
even within our own corner of the earth, mountains 
and waterfalls overpower him, and he shuffles back 
to shops and streets. 

Let persons so constitutionally different be shut 
into a sick-room, knowing that they will issue from 
it only by death, and what will they do ? By the 
habit of looking forward to this exit for relief, the 
timid may come to speak and think of it as tran- 
quilly as the speculative; but then, when the 
sensation overtakes him, the difference is again 
apparent. It does seem as if there were in the 
seizure of death a sensation wholly peculiar, and 
which cannot be mistaken. Cases of unconscious- 
ness are no evidence to the contrary ; and there 
are so many instances of decisive declaration by 
the dying, as to make the fact pretty certain. Then 
finally appears (supposing both conscious) the dis- 
tinction in the act of dying, between the enlarged 



1 20 ESSAYS. 

and speculative mind and the contracted one which 
clings to details. Then the harassed sufferer, who 
has a hundred times exclaimed, in the struggles 
of disease, " O! this is dying many times over!" 
shudders out at last, in quite another tone, "O 
God! this is death !" Then the exhausted 
debauchee, after every hollow show of preparation 
by decorous prayer, mutters, in the terror of the 
reality, " O God ! this is death ! " At such a time, 
the philosophic physician, seizing his sole oppor- 
tunity of experience of the phenomena of death, 
keeps his finger on his pulse as his heart is coming 
to a stop, and notifies its last beat as a fact in useful 
science. At such a time, the diligent Christian — 
a judge, a rich man, without a crook in his lot — 
suddenly sentenced, struggles to breathe into his 
wife's bending ear his last words : " This is death ! 
Our children . . . tell them — I have had every- 
thing man could enjoy . . . and all is nothing in 
comparison with holiness. Pure and holy — make 
them. Care for nothing else! O! all is well!" 
When he could no longer speak or move, his 
countenance was full of soul ; not a trace of fear 
upon it, but a whole heaven of joyful expectation. 
Here are diiferences ! 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 1^1 

Of course, there is no waiting till the last 
moment for these differences to show themselves. 
Outside enquirers may be satisfied that invalids' 
anticipation of death varies with their habits of 
mind. Some merely anticipate ; some contemplate. 
With some, the anticipation is merely of relief and 
rest ; with others it is worthier of our human and 
Christian hope. In no case of permanent illness 
can I conceive the idea to be otherwise than 
familiar, under one aspect or another ; so familiar, 
as that it is astonishing to us that we can obtain 
so little conversation upon it as a reality — a cer- 
tainty in full view. To us this seems more extra- 
ordinary than it would be if the friends of Parry, 
and Franklin, or Back, were, as the season for a 
Polar expedition drew nigh, to talk to them about 
everything else, but be constrained and shy on 
that. I say " more extraordinary," because it is 
not everybody that is bound, sooner or later, to 
the North Pole, but only a few crews ; whereas, 
all have an interest in the passage of that other, 
that " narrow sea," and in the " better country " 
which is its further shore. 

Perhaps the familiarity of the idea of death is 
by nothing so much enhanced to us as by the 



122 ESSAYS. 

departure before us of those who have sympathised 
in our prospect. The close domestic interest thus 
imparted to that other life is such as I certainly 
never conceived of when in health, and such as I 
observe people in health do not conceive of now. 
It seems but the other day that I was receiving 
letters of sympathy and solace, and also of religious 
and philosophical investigation as to how life here 
and hereafter appeared to me ; letters which told 
of activity, of labours, and journeyings, which 
humbled me by a sense of idleness and uselessness, 
while they spoke of humbling feelings in regarding 
the privileges of my seclusion. All this is as if it 
were yesterday : and now, these correspondents 
have been gone for years. For years we have 
thought of them as knowing " the grand secret," 
as familiarized with those scenes we are for ever 
prying into, while I lie no wiser (in such a com- 
parison) than when they endeavoured to learn 
somewhat of these matters from me. And besides 
these close and dear companions, what departures 
are continually taking place ! Every new year 
there are several — friends, acquaintance, or 
strangers — who shake their heads when I am 
mentioned, in friendly regret at another year 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 12o 

opening before me without prospect of health — 
who send me comforts or luxuries, or words of 
sympathy, amidst the pauses of their busy lives ; 
and before another year comes round, they have 
dropped out of our world — have learned quickly 
far more than I can acquire by my leisure — and 
from being merely outside my little spot of life, 
have passed to above and beyond it. Little ones 
who speculated on me with awe — youthful ones 
who ministered to me with pity — busy and import- 
ant persons, who gave a cordial but passing sigh 
to the lot of the idle and helpless ; some of all 
these have outstripped me, and left me looking 
wistfully after them. Such incidents make the 
future at least as real and familiar to me as the 
outside world ; and every permanent invalid will 
say the same : and we must not be wondered at if 
we speak of that great interest of ours oftener, and 
with more familiarity, than others use. 

Neither should we be wondered at if we speak 
with a confidence which some cannot share, of 
meeting these our friends, and communing with 
them, when we ourselves depart. We have no 
power to doubt of this, if we believe at all that we 
shall live hereafter. I have said how intensely we 

g2 



124 ESSAYS. 

feel that our spiritual part is indestructible. We 
feel no less vividly that of that spiritual part the 
affections are the true vitality ; that they are the 
soul within the soul — our inmost life. The 
affections cannot exist without their objects ; and 
our congenial friends — the brethren of our soul — 
therefore survive as surely as God survives. If 
God is recognisable by the worshipper, and Christ 
by the Christian, the beloved are recognisable by 
those who love. To demur to this to the sufferer 
who (all other life being weakened and embittered) 
lives by the affections, divine and human, is, to 
him, much like doubting whether the atmosphere 
bears any relation to music, or the human under- 
standing to truth. 

If there are hours when, through pain and 
weakness, we would fain decline existence alto- 
gether, as a sick and wearied child frets at sun- 
shine and music, and would rather sleep in dark- 
ness and silence, there is no moment in which we 
do not believe, as if we saw, that the departed 
righteous are in communion, full and active, in 
exact proportion as the ardour and fidelity of 
their mutual love deserves and necessitates. We 
believe this as if we saw it, whatever be our own 



DEATH TO THE INVALID. 125 

immediate mood, as, on every night of winter, 
however cloudy, we are well assured that the con- 
stellations are in the sky, — that Orion and the 
Wain have risen and are circling, steady, clear 
and serene, whatever be the state of the elements 
below them. As the life of the sick-room must 
necessarily be, whether its objects be high or low, 
one of faith and not of sight, those who visit it 
may easily perceive that it is not the appropriate 
field for demonstration. In its own province 
Demonstration is supreme. There let it dictate 
and pronounce. But we sufferers inhabit a sepa- 
rate region of human experience, where there is 
another and a prophetic oracle ; where the voice 
of Demonstration itself must be dumb before that 
of the steadfast, incommunicable assurance of the 
soul. 

Here are some of the aspects of Death to the 
long-sufTering Invalid. 



126 



TEMPER, 



" We are not ourselves 
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind 
To suffer with the body." Shakspere. 

" Behold thy trophies within thee, not without thee. Lead thine own 
captivity captive, and be Caesar unto thyself." Sir Thomas Brown. 



It is very surprising, and rather amusing, to 
invalids whose constitution and disease dispose 
them to other kinds of ill-temper rather than 
irritability, to perceive how this tendency, and no 
other, is set up as a test of temper by persons 
inexperienced in sickness. There are cases, and 
they are not few, where an invalid's freedom from 
irritability of temper is a merit of a very high 
order indeed : but there are many, — perhaps 
more, — where, to award praise on this ground, is 
like extolling the sick person for being worthy of 
trust with untold gold, or for his being never 
known to game or get drunk. This last, indeed, 
may, — amidst the sinkings of illness, with wine 
and laudanum in the closet,— often be actually the 
greater merit. It is a case in which every thing 



TEMPER. 127 

depends on the existence of temptation. Persons 
suffering under frequent fever, or certain kinds of 
pain or nervous disturbance, or afflicted with ill- 
qualified nurses, may be pardoned for almost any 
degree of irritability, or may be unspeakably 
meritorious in resisting the tendency, with more 
or less steadiness. But there are some of us who 
cannot but smile at compliments on our freedom 
from irritability, when we feel that we never have 
the slightest inclination to be cross, nor have 
the least excuse for being so, — while we may be 
most abasingly aware of other kinds of frailty of 
temper. 

To me it appears that we are, for the most part, 
in greater peril from other faults, because they are 
less looked for, less discussed and recognised, and 
we are, therefore, less put upon our guard against 
them : and also because their consequences are less 
immediately and obviously detrimental to our own 
comfort. Besides that all persons grow up on the 
look-out for irritability of temper, and therefore 
are more or less on the watch against it when they 
come to be ill, it is clear to the idlest and most 
selfish mind, that the whole hope of comfort in 
the sick-room depends on the freedom and cheer- 



128 ESSAYS, 

fulness of the intercourse held in it, — a freedom 
and cheerfulness forfeited by irritability on the 
part of the sufferer, — necessarily forfeited, even if 
he were tended by the hands of angels. Children 
are the brightest, if not the tenderest, angels of 
the sick-room ; and the alternative between their 
coming springing in, not only voluntarily but 
eagerly, and their being brought, for observance' 
sake, with force and fear, is of itself inducement 
enough to self-control on the part of the most 
fretted patient, in the most feverish hour. Even 
in the middle of the night, when no one is by 
but the soundly sleeping nurse, the invalid feels 
admonished to suppress the slightest moan, when 
he sees in fancy his little friends the next morning 
either leaping from their beds at the joyful thought 
that they may visit him, or asking, with awe and 
gravity, whether they must go, and how soon they 
may come away. It is the sweetest of cordials to 
the heart of an invalid to learn, by chance, that 
children count the days and hours till they may 
come, and that all their gravity is about having to 
go away. It is the most refined flattery to let one 
know it : and the knowledge of it may well be 
almost a specific against ill-temper. And then 



TEMPER. 129 

again, the nurse. It is by no means sufficient for 
one's comfort that one's nurse should be well 
qualified, — ever so trust-worthy, and ever so kind : 
it is necessary too that she should be free ancL 
happy. There must be no fear in her tread,-— no 
reserve in her eye, — no management in her voice 
— no choice in her tidings. There is no ill-t?mper 
in that jealousy of the invalid's spirit which re- 
quires assurance of being no burden, and no re- 
straint. It is a righteous jealousy, and among ttW 
most effectual safeguards against the indulgence 
of ill-humour. That there are disorders, and 
seasons of illness, which almost compel the for- 
feiture of the mental and moral freedom and ease 
of the sick-room, is a painful truth ; and those who 
suffer under such irresistible or unresisted irrita- 
tion are supremely to be compassionated, whether 
their actual pain of body be more or less. But it 
is quite as certain that a large number of sufferers 
are exempt from temptation to this kind of failure, 
being subject, the while, to some other, — more 
tolerable, as affecting only, or chiefly, their own 
happiness. 

The very opposite failure to that of irritability, 
— which shows itself in dissatisfaction with others, 

g3 



\ 



] 30 ESSAYS. 

— is no less common, — unreasonable dissatisfaction 
with one's self. This lowering, depraving ten- 
dency to self-contempt requires for its establish- 
ment as a fault of temper, long protraction or 
permanence of illness : but when once established, 
it is as serious a fault of temper as can be enter- 
tained. Where religious faith and trust are insuf- 
ficient for the need, this temper is almost a neces- 
sary consequence of any degree of mental and 
^ioral activity in a sick prisoner. The retrospect 
of one's own life, from the stillness of the sick 
room, is unendurable to any considerate person, 
except in the light of the deepest religious humi- 
lity ; and the strongest faith in the all- wise order- 
ing of the moral world, is no more than sufficient 
to counteract that sickening which spreads from 
the distressed body to the anxious heart, when 
intervals of ease and lightness are few and brief. 
When to the pains and misgivings of such per- 
petual retrospect are added the burdens of a 
sense of present and permanent uselessness, and 
of overwhelming gratitude for services received 
from hour to hour,-— there is no self-respect in the 
world that will, unaided, support cheerfulness and 
equanimity. 



TEMPER. 131 

Without self-respect, there can be none of that 
healthy freedom of spirit which animates others 
to freedom, and exerts that influence which is 
ascribed to "a good temper," which removes 
hesitancy from the transaction of the daily business 
of life, and so permits life to appear in its natural 
aspect. Instead of this, where the spirit has lost 
its security of innocence, unconsciousness, or self- 
reliance, and become morbidly sensitive to failures 
and dangers, — where it has become cowardly in 
conscience, shrinking from all moral enterprise, 
and dreading moral injury from every occurrence, 
the temper of anxiety must spread from the 
sufferer to all about him, whether the causes of 
his trouble are intelligible to them or not. Moral 
progress, or even holding what he has gained, 
seems out of the question for one so shaken ; for, 
constantly feeling, as he does, that he cannot 
afford to do the least questionable thing, and 
every act being questionable in one aspect or 
another, he can only preserve one incessant 
shrinking attitude before the fearful ghost of 
Conscience, instead of bestirring himself to prove 
and use his new opportunities of spiritual exertion 
and conquest. This abasement may co-exist with 



132 ESSAYS. 

the most perfect sweetness and gentleness of 
speech and manners, and the sufferer may enjoy 
great credit for not being irritable, when he is in 
a far lower moral state than often co-exists with 
irritability. 

One effect, deplorably mean and perilous, of 
such a tendency, is immediately opposed to the 
mood which prompts hasty words and complaints. 
The sufferer's spirits rise in proportion to the pain 
he experiences. He is never so happy as when 
he feels his paroxysms coming on,— not only 
because pain of body acts as relief from the 
gnawing misery of his mind, but because every 
tangible proof that he is under chastening and 
discipline, conveys to him a sense of his dignity — 
reassures him, as a child of Providence. From 
this may follow too naturally his learning to regard 
pain as a qualification for ease — as a purchase- 
money of future good — a superstition as low and 
depraving as almost any the mind can entertain. 

To persons in health, and at ease, this detail 
of the tempers of a sick-room may well appear 
fanciful, irrational, and shocking enough. But 
the time may come when they may recognise it 
as true; and, meanwhile, it will be their wisest 



TEMPER. 133 

and kindest way to receive it with belief. It may 
possibly prove the key, even now, to a mystery 
which otherwise they can make nothing of, when 
they see one under tedious suffering, gentle but 
low when at ease — evidently borne down by 
speechless sadness — while, on the first return of 
pain, the spirits rise, and the more restless is the 
distressed body, the more at ease does the spirit 
appear. Such a state may be morbid and perilous ; 
but, the more it is so, the more desirable it becomes 
that the attending friend should have an insight 
into the case, and a respectful and tender sym- 
pathy with it. 

As to the remedy, it is easy to say that it is to 
be found in a cheerful trust in the Ordainer of our 
lot. While no one questions this, who can show 
how this trust is to be made available at every 
need, when the workings of the spirit are all 
confused, its vision impaired, and its powers 
distorted ? The only advice that even experience 
can give in such an instance, is to revive healthy 
old associations, to occupy the morbid powers 
with objects from without, and to use the happiest 
rather than the lowest seasons for leading the 
mind to a consideration of its highest relations. 



134 ESSAYS. 

As the case is opposite to that most commonly- 
discoursed of in connexion with the sick-room, 
so must a wise ministration be also opposite to 
common notions ; the appeal must be, in seasons 
of ease and enjoyment, to the sense of depend- 
ence on God; and, in times of mental distress, 
to the principles of endurance and self-mastery. 

Other tempers of the sick-room are more easily 
understood by those without. The particularity 
about trifles is one. This, though often reaching 
a point of absurdity, should be scrupulously 
indulged, because no one but the sufferer can be 
fully aware of the annoyance of want of order in 
so confined a space and range of objects. A 
healthy person, who can go everywhere at plea- 
sure, leaving litters to be put away by servants 
during absence, can have no idea of the oppression 
felt by a feeble invalid, when looking round upon 
the confusion left in one little room by careless 
visitors, — chairs standing in all directions, books 
thrown down here and there, and work or papers 
strewed on the floor. It is easy to laugh at such 
trifles — easy to the invalid himself at times ; but 
if any healthy person will recal his feelings during 
convalescence from any former illness, he will 



TEMPER. 135 

remember the sort of painful sympathy with which 
he saw the servants going about their work — how 
his frame ached at hearing of a long walk, or even 
at seeing his friends sitting upright upon chairs. 
If he considers w r hat it must be to have this set of 
feelings for life, he will think the particularity of 
the invalid not only worth indulging, but less 
absurd than in the eye of reason it appears ; and 
if it be too much to expect of men, it may be 
hoped that women visiting the sick may be careful 
to leave the spaces of the room clear, not to shake 
the sofa or the table, to put up books upon their 
shelves, and leave all in such a state that the 
invalid may, immediately on being left alone, sink 
down to such rest as can be found. 

No one challenges this particularity when it 
relates to hours. The most careless observer 
must know that it is illness of itself to a sick 
person to have to wait for food or medicines, or to 
be put off from regular sleep. Meantime, the 
invalid cannot keep too careful a watch upon the 
increase of his own particularity — his refuge in 
custom. There is something shocking to us 
invalids, when we fix our meditation upon this, 
in our attachments to our own comforts, and 



136 ESSAYS. 

cowardice about dispensing with them. I have 
myself observed, with inexpressible shame, that, 
with the newspaper in my hand, no details of the 
peril of empires, or of the starving miseries of 
thousands of my countrymen, could keep my eye 
from the watch before me, or detain my attention 
one second beyond the time when I might have 
my opiate. For two years, too, I wished and 
intended to dispense with my opiate for once, to 
try how much there was to bear, and how I 
should bear it : but I never did it, strong as was 
the shame of always yielding ; and I have now 
long given up all thoughts of it. Moreover, 
though as fully convinced as ever of the moral 
evil and danger of being wedded to custom and 
habits, I have now a far too decided and satis- 
factory impression that the sick-room is not the 
place for a conquest of that kind, and that it is 
enough if the patient breaks through his trammels 
when he casts off his illness, and emerges again 
into the world, which is the same thing as acqui- 
escing in the invalid for life being a life-long 
slave to custom and habit. Bad as this is, I do 
not see how it is to be helped ; for the suffering 
and injury caused by irregularity of methods, and 



TEMPER. 137 

uncertainty of arrangements in the sick-room, 
seem to show that freedom of this kind does not 
belong to an invalid life : and perhaps the most 
that ought to be required or desired of the sick 
person is, rather to welcome than complain of any 
necessary interruption to his ways, by a change of 
nurse, or other accidental interference with ordi- 
nary comforts, — not to extend his particularity 
beyond the bounds of his own little domain, and 
no more to expect the healthy and active to be, 
in their own homes, as strict and punctual as 
himself, than to desire the servants to leave off 
rubbing tables and lighting fires, because it makes 
his frame ache to think of such work. If he can 
preserve sympathy enough in the impulses of the 
active abroad, he may hope for indulgence in his 
particularity at home. 

There are other liabilities which may be clear to 
observers, or easily conceivable when mentioned. 
I hardly know whether we may allude, under the 
head of Tempers, to the despair which I believe 
to be universally felt (however discountenanced), 
by all, on the assault of very severe pain. The 
reason may speak, and even through the lips, of 
hope and courage ; but the sensation of which I 



138 ESSAYS. 

speak is peculiar, so peculiarly connected with 
bodily agony, that I cannot but believe it felt 
wherever bodily agony is felt. It has nothing to 
do with the courage of the soul ; affords not the 
shadow of contradiction to patience, fortitude, 
religious trust. I mean simply that when extreme 
pain seizes on us, down go our spirits, fathoms 
deep ; and, though the soul may yet be submissive 
and even willing, the sickening question rises, — 
" How shall I bear this for five minutes? What 
will become of me?" And if the imagination 
stretches on to an hour, or hours, there is no 
word but despair which expresses the feeling. 
The by-standers can never fully understand this 
suffering ; no, though they may themselves have 
suffered to extremity. The patient himself, in 
any interval, when devoutly ready to endure 
again, cannot understand, nor believe in his late 
emotion, or fancy that he can feel it again. As it 
is thus peculiar and transient, there could be no 
use in mentioning it, except for two possibilities ; 
that some sufferer may, in the moment of anguish, 
remember that the sensation has been recognised 
and recorded ; and that attendants, on witnessing 
a sudden abasement of high courage, on seeing 



TEMPER. 189 

horror of countenance succeed a calm determina- 
tion, may remember, at the right moment, that 
there is that passing within of which they can have 
no conception, and certainly no right to judge. 

I might add, as a justification for allusion to so 
painful a subject, that it may teach us to honour, 
in some less faint degree, the strength of soul of 
those who, with any composure, die of sheer pain, 
— of the most torturing diseases. If, amidst suc- 
cessive shocks of this despairing sensation, their 
power of reaction, in the intervals, remains unim- 
paired, and they retain their spiritual dignities to 
the end, no degree of admiration can transcend 
their claims. 

One strong peril to temper, in the case of a 
permanent invalid, I do not remember to have 
seen noticed, while, I am sure, none can be more 
worthy of being guarded against. By our being 
withdrawn from the disturbing bustles of life in 
the world; by our leisure for reading and con- 
templation of various sides of questions, and by 
our singular opportunities for quiet reflection, we 
must, almost necessarily, see farther than we used 
to do, and further than many others do on sub- 
jects of interest, which involve general principles. 



140 ESSAYS. 

Through the post, we hold the best kind of cor- 
respondence with the society from which we are 
withdrawn; we have the opinions of the wise, 
and the impressions of the active, transmitted to 
us, stripped of much of the passion and prejudice 
in which they would have been presented in 
conversation. Instead of one newspaper or pam- 
phlet, we now have time to look over several, 
and can hear all sides. Far removed from the 
little triumphs or disappointments of the day, 
which warp the judgments of all men who have 
hearts to feel, whatever may be their abstract 
wisdom ; endowed with long night hours of 
wakefulness, when our spirit of Humanity is all 
alive ; permitted sequestered days, when our 
review of historical periods may be continuous, 
and when some great new idea, a stalactite of 
long formation, at length descends to our level, 
and touches our heads, or a diamond of thought, 
slowly distilled, drops into our hand as we pene- 
trate and explore; — when some such gain — the 
guerdon of our condition — is frequently occur- 
ring, it cannot be but that — unless we are fools, 
our judgments of things must be worth something 
more than formerly. If formerly we associated 



TEMPER. 141 

with our equals, it cannot be but that we must 
now see further than they, on such questions of 
the time as interest us. 

Such divergences of opinion as hence arise 
require care on the part both of sick and well, if a 
perfectly just and generous understanding is to be 
preserved between friends. 

The liability of us sick is double. We are in 
danger of forgetting, amidst the inevitable con- 
sciousness of our own improved insight and fore- 
sight, that the activities of life have a corrective as 
well as a disturbing influence ; and that transient 
incidents and emotions which do not reach us, 
may form real elements of a great question for the 
week or the year, though lost in our abstract view 
of it. In this way, our judgment may involve 
great imperfections, which it behoves us to re- 
member all the more, the less we can supply them. 
A worse liability is that to our tempers, of impa- 
tience at others not seeing so far as we do. There 
is something strange, disappointing and irritating, 
in finding those whom we have always regarded 
as sensible and clear-headed, holding some ex- 
pectation which we see to be unreasonable, and 
offering to our consideration some fallacy or misty 



142 ESSAYS. 

notion, whose incorrectness is to us as distinct as a 
cloud in the sky. While religiously careful not 
to fret ourselves " because of evil doers/' being so 
expressly desired, we are sadly prone to the far 
worse weakness of fretting ourselves because of 
mistaken thinkers. We long to send by a carrier- 
pigeon the answer or refutation which seems to us 
so clear : the post is too slow for us ; and if we do 
not disburden our minds of their weight of wis- 
dom, we are apt to spend the night in reiterating 
to ourselves our triumphant arguments, in the 
strongest and most condensed language we can 
find, till, exhausted by such efforts, at last the 
thought occurs to us whether truth cannot wait, — 
whether, supposing us ever so right intellectually, 
we are not morally wrong in our perturbation. 
This confession looks foolish and humbling enough 
in black and white ; but I cannot escape making 
it, if, as I intend, I complain of some little in- 
justice on the other hand, sustained by us. 

Where such divergences of opinion arise, men 
of activity (and women, no less) are apt, whatever 
may be their abstract respect for closet specula- 
tors, and reverence for sequestered sufferers, to 
speak with regret, or at least with respectful com- 



TEMPER. 143 

passion, of the warping influences of seclusion and 
illness, as particularly illustrated by the case in 
point. They attribute all differences to these 
causes, and never doubt that the old agreement 
would exist, by the invalid's views being the same 
as their own, but for the distorting medium 
through which the sick are compelled to regard 
events ; or but for the influence which certain 
parties have obtained over his mind, by service or 
sympathy. This may be more or less true, in 
individual cases. Still, it is for the interests of 
truth and temper to remind the healthy and busy 
that the warp may possibly not be all on one side, 
and the enlightenment on the other ; and that 
there may be influences in the life of the medita- 
tive invalid which may render his views more 
comprehensive, and his judgments more, rather 
than less, sound than heretofore. If there is any 
practicable test of this, it must be looked for in his 
habitual tone of mind and life. Unless this proves 
perversion or folly, his mind must, in justice, 
be held as at least as worthy of consideration 
as at any former season of his life. If his funda- 
mental opinions have undergone no change, but 
rather enlargement with special modifications, 



144 ESSAYS. 

they are decidedly worthy of more respect than 
ever. 

Thus does my experience moralize for both 
parties. If, in ordinary life, there is no peace of 
mind for those whose happiness depends on the 
good opinion of everybody, much less can there 
be tranquillity of mind in the sick-room for such. 
When we are in the world, our presence breaks 
down mistaken or slanderous allegations, and we 
are sure to be seen as we are, and to be rightly 
understood, by large numbers of persons, — by all, 
indeed, whose opinion is of value to us. But, 
while sequestered in the sick-room, we are, in 
point of reputation, wholly at the mercy of those 
who speak of us. It is true, most persons are so 
humane, and those about us are so touched by our 
affliction, as that the best construction is put on 
our manners and conduct by the greater number 
of reporters. But it is strange and fortunate if 
there be not, among our acquaintance, some intru- 
sive person whom we have to keep at a distance, — 
some meddler whom we have to check, some 
well-meaning mischief-maker, of impenetrable 
complacency, who will most affectionately and 
compassionately report us as sadly changed, unable 



TEMPER. 145 

to value our best friends, or to estimate the most 
important services. Whether charges like these 
arise, or old misrepresentations reappear, while 
we are invisible and defenceless, we may be 
miserable enough if we let such things trouble us. 
Those least in danger, as to temper, are persons 
of note, who have had former experience of the 
diversities of the world's opinion. They can 
smile and wait. But it may be easily conceived 
that such incidents may be trying to invalids who 
are the subjects of notoriety for the first time, — 
of that sort of notoriety which affliction creates, 
through the universal sympathy of human hearts. 
Under so new an experience, the sufferer may feel 
more vexation by the accidental knowledge of one 
unjust representation of his state of temper, than 
cheered by a hundred evidences of the esteem 
and sympathy of those about him. For the evil 
there is no help; but there are abundant re- 
sources against the vexation, — the same resources 
which enable the humble and hoping Christian, 
whether strong or weak, rich or poor in outward 
blessings, to go through good or evil report with 
a heart tranquil in Divine Trust, and occupied 
with human love. 



146 



BECOMING INURED. 



' ' Sunt homines qui cum patientia moriuntur : sunt autem quidam perfecti 
qui cum patientia vivunt." St. Augustin. 

"No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep 
Crowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep : 
But reverend discipline, religious fear, 
And soft obedience find sweet biding here ! 

The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers 

Her kindred with the stars : not basely hovers 

Below — but meditates the immortal way 

Home to the source of light and intellectual day." ^Crashaw. 



We hear, every day, benevolent and compas- 
sionate persons, in discussing the woes of sufferers, 
dwelling on the thought of such sufferers becoming 
inured ; and we see them, if possible, reposing on 
this as the closing and conclusive idea. How 
natural this is ! How often and how undoubtingly 
we did it ourselves, in our days of ease ! But how 
differently it sounds now ! How quickly do we 
detect in it the discharge and dismissal of uneasy 
sympathies ! How infallibly do we see how far 
it may be true ; and what a tale could we tell of 
what is included in the phrase, "becoming inured," 
where ifc may be most truly applied ! of what 



BECOMING INURED. 147 

experience is involved in the process, where it is 
shortest and easiest ! 

I was lately speaking to a tender-hearted woman, 
who had known suffering, but not torment, of 
more than one case of persons who, dying slowly 
under a torturing disease, simply and naturally 
declared, shortly before death, the season of their 
illness to have been the happiest part of their lives. 
There are different ways of explaining this fact, 
which, though I always believed it, I did not till 
lately understand. My friend, however, found no 
difficulty. She said, in a tone of pitying tender- 
ness, but of perfect decision, " O ! they become 
inured to it." I replied by some slight description 
of the suffering in the case which had impressed 
me most, and asked if she thought use and expe- 
rience could soften pain like that. " yes," she 
again said, " they become inured to it. That is 
certainly the thing." 

Is it so? I am persuaded it is not. To the 
great majority of evils men may become inured; 
but not to all. To almost every kind, and to vast 
degrees of privation, moral and physical, they may 
become inured ; and to chronic sufferings of mind 
and body: but I am convinced that there is no 
h2 



148 ESSAYS. 

more possibility of becoming inured to acute agony 
of body than to paroxysms of remorse — the severest 
of moral pains. For the sake of both sufferers and 
sympathisers, it would be well that this should be 
thoroughly understood, that aid may not fall short, 
nor relief be looked for in the wrong direction. 

The truth is, as all will declare who are subject 
to a frequently recurring pain, a familiar pain 
becomes more and more dreaded, instead of 
becoming lightly esteemed in proportion to its 
familiarity. The general sense of alarm which it 
probably occasioned when new, may have given 
way and disappeared before a knowledge of conse- 
quences, and a regular method of management or 
endurance ; but the pain itself becomes more 
odious, more oppressive, more feared, in proportion 
to the accumulation of experience of weary hours, 
in proportion to the aggregate of painful associa- 
tions which every visitation revives. When it is, 
moreover, considered that the suffering part of the 
body is, if not recovering, growing continually 
more diseased and susceptible of pain, it will 
appear how little truth there is in the supposition 
of tortured persons becoming inured to torture. 

The inuring process which I hold to be 



BECOMING INURED. 



149 



impossible in the cases mentioned is, however, 
practicable and frequent in almost all cases of 
inferior suffering. But, while all join in thanking , 
God for this, there is a wide difference in the view 
taken of the fact by those who feel and those who 
only observe it. To the last, it is a clear and 
satisfactory truth, shining on the rock of futurity, 
which they can sit and gaze at from the window of 
their ease, commenting on the blessing of such a 
beacon-light to those who need it. To those who 
need it, meanwhile, it is far far off — sometimes 
hidden and sometimes despaired of, as the waves 
and the billows go over them, and the point can 
be reached only through sinkings and struggles, 
and fears and anguish, with scanty breathing-times 
between. Why is this not admitted in the case of 
the invalid as it is in that of the person losing a 
sense ? One who is becoming blind or deaf is sure 
to grow inured in time ; but through what a series 
of keen mortifications, of bitter privations ! Every 
one sees and understands this ; while in the case 
of the invalid, many spring to the conclusion, 
overlooking the process of discipline which has, 
in that case, as in the other, to be undergone. It 
should never be forgotten how different a thing it 



150 ESSAYS. 

is to read off this lesson from the clear print of 
assertion or observation, and to learn it experi- 
mentally, at a scarcely perceptible rate, " line 
upon line and precept upon precept ;" when every 
line is burnt in by pain, and the long series of 
precepts are registered by their degrees of anguish. 
When the nature of the process has been suffi- 
ciently dwelt upon to be understood — that the 
hearts of the happy may be duly softened, and 
those of the suffering duly cheered by sympathy — 
then let all good be said of the inuring process ; at 
least all the good that is true ; and that is much. 
No wise man will declare that it is the best and 
healthiest condition for any one. No wise man 
will deny that the healthiest moral condition is 
found where there is the most abundant happiness. 
Happiness is clearly the native, heavenly atmo- 
sphere of the soul — that in which it is " to live and 
move and have its being " hereafter, and in pro- 
portion to its share of which, now and here, it 
makes its heavenly growth. The divinest souls — 
the loftiest, most disinterested and devoted — all 
unite in one testimony, that they have been best 
when happiest ; that they were then most energetic 
and spontaneously devoted — least self-conscious. 



BECOMING INURED. 151 

This must and may joyfully be granted. But. as 
the mystery of evil is all round about us, as we 
have no choice whether or not to suffer, we may 
be freely thankful next for the inuring process, as 
being the possible means, though inferior to hap- 
piness, of divine ends. 

Far, indeed, does the sufferer feel from reaching 
those ends, when he contrasts his own state with 
that of the truly happy man. When he looks 
upon one so "little lower than the angels,*' on 
his frame, so nerved and graced by health, his 
eye emitting the glow of the soul, his voice utter- 
ing the music of the heart, his hand strong to 
effect his purposes, his head erect in the liberty of 
ease, his intellect and soul free from perplexities 
and cares, and not only at leisure for the service 
of others, but restless to impart to them of his own 
overflowing good ; when the sufferer contemplates 
such a being, and contrasts him with himself, he 
may well feel how much he has to do, to approach 
this higher order of his race. Aware of his own 
internal tremblings at the touch of the familiar 
pain, sinking in weakness before the bare idea of 
enterprise, abashed by self-consciousness, smarting 
under tenderness of conscience, perplexed and 



152 ESSAYS. 

bewildered by the intricacy and vastness of human 
woe, of which his own suffering gives him too 
keen a sense, well may he who is in the bonds of 
pain look up humbly to him who walks gloriously 
in joy; and the humility might sink into abject- 
ness if the matter ended here, if the inuring 
process were not at work. But herein is ample 
ground for hope now, and greatness in the future ; 
and if a secondary, still a sufficient greatness. 

The sufferer may well be satisfied, and needs 
be abashed before no mortal, if he obtains, sooner 
or later, the power to achieve divine ends through 
the experience of his lot. If, beginning by 
encountering his familiar pain, and putting down 
the dread of it by looking merely to the comfort 
of the reaction when it ceases, he attains at length 
to conquering pain by the power of ideas ; if, ease 
of body being out of the question, he makes 
activity of spirit suffice him ; if, his own future in 
this life being a blank, he becomes absorbed in 
that of other men; if, imprisoned by disease, 
kingdoms and races are not wide enough for his 
sympathies; if, as this or that sense is extinguished, 
or this or that limb is laid fast, his spirit becomes 
more alive in every faculty ; if familiarity with 



BECOMING INURED. 158 

pain enables him so to deal with itj as resolutely 

to cut off every morbid spiritual growth to which 
he has been made liable by pain ; if. instead of 
succumbing to unfavourable conditions, he has 
struggled against dwarfage and distortion, and 
diligently wrought at the renewal of the inward 
man. while the outward frame was decaying day 
by day, he may surmount his humiliations, what- 
ever cause for humility maybe left by so impaired 
an existence. For him the inuring process will 
have done its best. 

For those who from constitutional irritability 
cannot become inured, there is, daily opening, 
and at shorter distance, the grave, where " the 
weary are at rest." 

For those on whom the inuring process acts 
amiss, — petrifying instead of vivifying the soul, we 
may and must hope, on the ground that they are in 
the hands of one whose ways and thoughts are not 
ours, nor within our ken. They are a mystery to 
us, like the cankered buds and blighted blossoms 
of our gardens. Or it may be, that there is no 
corruption or decay, but only torpidity, induced 
by the protraction of their polar night of adversity. 
It may be. that their life is only hidden away for 

hS 



154 ESSAYS. 

a season, and that when the breath of the eternal 
spring shall dissolve their icy bonds, they may 
start forth as new-born, and their preceding dead- 
ness be mercifully counted to them but as a long 
dream. 

There is no danger, no false security to one's- 
self, in hoping thus much for them ; for one must 
be as far from reconciling one's-self to their con- 
dition as from preferring dreams to contemplation, 
or the sleep of the frame to the life of the spirit. 



155 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM. 



; Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope." Zechariah. 

" Wherefore, for virtue's sake 
I can he well content 
The sweetest time in all my life 
To deem in thinking spent." Lord Vaux. 



It is amusing (in a somewhat mournful way, 
however,) to sick people, to observe how children 
and other inexperienced persons believe, notwith- 
standing all explanation and assurance, that it must 
be a very pleasant thing to be ill — gently ill, so as 
not to be groaning with pain, or confined to bed- 
They derive an impression of comfort and luxury 
from what they see, which it is impossible to 
weaken by descriptions of suffering which they 
have never felt, and cannot conceive of. They 
see the warm room in winter, with its well- 
cushioned couch, and think how comfortable it 
must be never to have the toes frozen, or a shower 
of sleet driven in one's face. * The fire in the 
chamber all night — the flowers and books that lie 
strewed about all day — the pictures on the walls 



156 ESSAYS. 

—the dainty meals — the punctual and careful 
attendance— these are things which make illness 
look extremely pleasant to the healthiest people, 
who are those that have the keenest relish for 
pleasure. Few of such are there who have that 
insight of sympathy which drew from my little 
friend at my elbow the sighing exclamation — 
"Ah! but there is the unhealthiness ! that spoils 
everything ! " 

Even if the ordinary run of inexperienced 
persons could see the whole of our day, I should 
not expect them to understand the matter much 
better. If they saw us turn from the dainty 
meal, and wear a look of distress and fear, in the 
midst of everthing that to them indicates comfort 
and security, I imagine that they could only 
wonder, till they knew for themselves how bodily 
distress excludes pleasure from outward objects, 
and how the mental weaknesses which prevail 
amidst an unnatural and difficult mode of life 
convert the most innocent and ordinary occur- 
rences into occasions of apprehension, or of self- 
distrust or self-disgust. 

If they must witness the painful and humbling 
aspect of the mode of life, it is much to be wished 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM. 157 

that they might also see another fact belonging 
to it — to them, perhaps, no less mysterious than 
the misery ; but not the less salutary for that, as 
it may teach them that there is much, both of 
good and evil, in our condition, which it will be 
wiser in them to observe than to judge of. 

The benign mystery which I would have them 
witness is, the power of ideas over us. A child 
knows something of this in his own way. In war- 
time, little boys leave their pet plays to run about 
and tell everybody the news of a great battle. 
A child cannot eat the best dinner in the world 
on the day of first going to the play. The 
doll is thrown into a corner, when news comes 
of any acquaintance being burnt out in the 
middle of the night ; or when anecdotes are 
telling of any old martyr who suffered heroically. 
In their own way, children are conscious, when 
reminded, of the power of ideas ; but they cannot 
conceive of our way of experiencing the same 
force — to us so renovating ! If it is at times 
surprising to the most enlightened and sympa- 
thising of our companions, it may well be asto- 
nishing to those in the early stages of observation. 
They see, with a sort of awe, how priceless 



158 ESSAYS. 

are certain pictures to us, in comparison with all 
others. They hear us speak of the landscapes, 
the portraits, the graceful and beautiful images 
which adorn the walls ; but they observe how, 
when restless and distressed, we steal a glance 
upwards at one picture, and find something there 
which seems to set us right — to rally us at once. 
If such a picture as the Chiiisttjs Consolator of 
Scheffer be within view of the sick-couch — (that 
talisman, including the consolations of eighteen 
centuries ! — that mysterious assemblage of the 
redeemed Captives and tranquillised Mourners of 
a whole Christendom ! — that inspired epitome of 
suffering and solace !) — it may well be a cause 
of wonder, almost amounting to alarm, to those 
who, not having needed, have never felt its 
power. If there were now burnings or drownings 
for sorcery, that picture, and some who possess 
it, would soon be in the fire, or at the bottom 
of a pond. No mute operation of witchcraft, or 
its dread, could exceed the silent power of that 
picture over sufferers. Again — if the inexpe- 
rienced chance to see us in an unfavourable hour, 
when our self-control cannot rise beyond con- 
straint — when our words are fewest, however 



POWER OF IDEAS IX THE SICK-ROOM. 159 

gentle the voice — when our posture is rigid, 
because we will not be restless, and our faces 
tell the distress we think we are concealing; if, 
at such a time, the post comes in, how miraculous 
must seem the change to one who does not know 
what we have just read in letters or newspapers — 
and, perhaps, could not understand its efficacy, 
if he had seen. He sees us start up on the couch, 
hears us become voluble, and talk in a free and 
joyous tone; — beholds us eat and drink, without 
thinking what is put before us ; — perhaps is 
surprised at a flow of tears, which seems to 
dissolve the misery, whatever it was ; and finds, 
to his amazement, that all this is caused bv 
something to him so dry as the appointment 
of a committee in the House — a speech on some 
hustings — an improved quarter's revenue ; — or> 
perhaps, something not dry, but merely curious, 
and to him anything but moving, — a new appear- 
ance attending an eclipse — an arrangement for 
embanking the Nile, or cutting through the 
Isthmus of Panama, or some vast discovery in 
science or the arts. He may, again, see the 
relaxation yet more complete, — may perceive, 
without a word being spoken, that we are well 



160 ESSAYS. 

for the hour, — the eye swimming in happiness, 
the voice full of gentle joy; so that he is con- 
vinced that illness does not " spoil everything." 
In this case, some comfort has come, too sacred to 
be told, — at least then ; some news or appeal from 
the primary christians and confessors of our day, — ■• 
the American abolitionists, — some opening to us 
for doing some little service, — or, as not seldom 
happens, some word of true sympathy which rouses 
our spirit, as the trumpet stirs the war-horse, — 
some sudden light showing our position on our 
pilgrim path, — some hint of our high calling, — 
some apt warning of a pregnant truth, adminis- 
tered by a wise and loving comforter. 

If I were asked whether there is any one idea 
more potential than any other over every sort of 
suffering, in a mode of life like ours, most hearers 
of the question would make haste to answer for 
me that there is such a variety of potential ideas, 
suited to such wide differences of mood of mind 
and body, that it must be impossible to measure the 
strength of any one. Nevertheless, I should reply 
that there is one, to me more powerful at present 
than I can now conceive any single idea to have 
been in any former states of my mind. It is this ; 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM. 161 

that it matters infinitely less what we do than what 
we are. I can conceive the amazement of many at 
this announcement, — of many even who admit its 
truth, and feelingly admit it, as I myself did when 
it was first brought home to me from the printed 
page of one friend by the heart-breathing voice of 
another. I care not who wonders, and who only 
half understands, while there are some few to 
whom this thought may be what it is to me. No 
one will be so short-sighted as to apply it as an 
excuse for indolence in the active and healthy, — 
so clear is it that such cannot be what they ought 
to be, unless they do all they can. But perhaps it 
is only the practised in human sorrows who can 
see far enough into the boundless truth of this 
thought to appreciate its worth to us. Suffice it 
here that it has the power I ascribe to it, and 
that we whom it has consoled long to administer 
it when we see old age restless in its infirmity, 
activity disappointed of its scope or instruments, 
or the most useful agents of society, the most 
indispensable members of families paralysed by 
disease. We long to whisper it in the dungeons 
of Spielberg, where it opens a career within the 
narrowest recess of those thick walls. We long 



162 



ESSAYS. 



to send a missive to every couch of the sick, to 
every arm-chair of the aged and the blind, 
reminding them that the great work of life is 
ours still, — through all modes of life but that of 
the madhouse, — the formation of a heavenly soul 
within us. If we cannot pursue a trade or a science, 
or keep house, or help the state, or write books, 
or earn oar own bread or that of others, we can 
do the work to which all this is only subsidiary, — 
we can cherish a sweet and holy temper, — we can 
vindicate the supremacy of mind over body, — we 
can, in defiance of our liabilities, minister plea- 
sure and hope to the gayest who come prepared to 
receive pain from the spectacle of our pain ; we 
can, here as well as in heaven's courts hereafter, 
reveal the angel growing into its immortal aspect, 
which is the highest achievement we could pro- 
pose to ourselves, or that grace from above could 
propose to us, if we had a free choice of all 
possible conditions of human life. If any doubt 
the worth of the thought, from the common 
habit of overlooking the importance of what 
is done in its character of index of what the 
agent is, let him resort at once to the foun- 
tain-head of spiritual exemplification, and say 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM, 163 

whether it matters most what Christ was or 
what he did. 

The worth of this particular thought is a sepa- 
rate consideration from that of the worth of any 
sound abstract idea to sufferers liable to a besetting 
personal recollection, or doubt, or care. But, 
before I speak of this, I must allude to a subject 
which causes inexpressible pain whenever it 
occurs to us sick prisoners. I have said how 
unavailing is luxury when the body is distressed 
and the spirit faint. At such times, and at all 
times, we cannot but be deeply grieved at the 
conception of the converse of our own state, at the 
thought of the multitude of poor suffering under 
privation, without the support and solace of great 
ideas. It is sad enough to think of them on a 
winter's night, aching with cold in every limb, and 
sunk as low as we in nerve and spirits, from their 
want of sufficient food. But this thought is sup- 
pe^'^ole in cases where we may fairly hope that 
the greatest ideas are cheering them as we are 
cheered : that there is a mere set-off of their cold 
and hunger against our disease ; and that we are 
alike inspired by spiritual vigour in the belief that 
our Father is with us, — that we are only encoun- 



1 64 ESSAYS. 

tering the probations of our pilgrimage, — that we 
have a divine work given us to carry out, now in 
pain and now in joy. There is comfort in the 
midst of the sadness and shame when we are 
thinking of the poor who can reflect and pray, — 
of the old woman who was once a punctual and 
eager attendant at church, — of the wasting child 
who was formerly a Sunday-scholar, — of the re- 
duced gentleman or destitute student who retain 
the privilege of their humanity, — of " looking 
before and after." But there is no mitigation of 
the horror when we think of the savage poor, who 
form so large a proportion of the hungerers, — 
when we conceive of them suffering the privation 
of all good things at once, — suffering under the 
aching cold, the sinking hunger, the shivering 
nakedness, — without the respite or solace afforded 
by one inspiring or beguiling idea. 

I will not dwell on the reflection. A glimpse 
into this hell ought to suffice, (though we to whom 
imagery comes unbidden, and cannot be banished 
at will, have to bear much more than occasional 
glimpses ;) a glimpse ought to suffice to set all to 
work to procure for every one of these sufferers, 
bread and warmth, if possible, and as soon as 



POWER OF IDEAS IX THE .SICK-ROOM. 16-5 

possible : but above everything, and -without the 
loss of an hour, an entrance upon their spiritual 
birthright. Every man, and every woman, how- 
ever wise and tender appearing and designing to 
be, who for an hour helps to keep closed the 
entrance to the region of ideas, — who stands 
between sufferers and great thoughts, (which are 
the angels of consolation sent by God to all to 
whom he has given souls.) are, in sd far, ministers 
of hell,- — not themselves inflicting torment, but 
intercepting the influences which would assuage 
or overpower it. Let the plea be heard of us 
sufferers who know well the power of ideas, — our 
plea for the poor, — -that, while we are contriving 
for all to be fed and cherished by food and fire, 
we may meanwhile kindle the immortal vitality 
within them, and give them that ethereal solace 
and sustenance which was meant to be shared by 
all, ''•' without money and without price. ;? 

It seems but just (if we may venture so to 
speak;, that there should be the renovating power 
in ideas that I have described, for our worst 
sufferings arise from an unmitigated power of ideas 
in another sort. I am not qualified by experience 
to speak of severe continued bodily torment, 



166 ESSAYS. 

but all testimony seems to concur with all our 
experience, that there is no such instrument of 
torture as a besetting thought. The mere descrip- 
tion of the suffering, given by those who know it, 
seems to have wrought upon the general mind, 
for a kind of shudder goes round when it is 
mentioned, though it can no more be conceived of 
by the gay and occupied, than the continual 
dropping of water on the head can be imagined 
by him whose transactions with the element 
consist in a plunge bath every morning. It is 
known, however, that herculean men have shrunk 
to shadows under the infliction, that it has reduced 
heroes to tremble at the whispering wind, or the 
striking of the clock, that it turns the raven-hair 
gray, lets down genius into idiocy, and starves 
the most vigorous life into an atrophy. How 
then are the sick to meet this woe, which comes 
upon them with force exactly proportioned to their 
weakness ! 

If every sick prisoner in our land were ques- 
tioned, and could and would answer truly, I 
believe all would reply (all who have minds) that 
their worst pangs are in the soul. For the 
moment, — for the hour, — no agony is, I know, to 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM. 1()7 

be compared with some pains of body ; but when 
the question is of months and years (including 
the seasons of delicious reaction from bodily 
pains), I am confident that the peculiar misery of 
our condition — subjection to a besetting thought — 
will be owned to absorb all others. Whether the 
thought relate to any intellectual matter, or 
whether it be self-abasement and self-weariness at 
the perpetually-recurring apparition of sins, follies, 
trifling old misadventures and misbehaviour, or 
whether some more serious cause of remorse, the 
tormenting and weakening effects are much alike ; 
the cold horror at waking up to the thought in 
the middle of the night, knowing that we shall 
sleep no more ; the misery of opening our eyes 
upon a new day, with the spell of the thought 
full upon us ; the dread of giving ourselves up to 
thinking, and yet the inability to read, while the 
enemy is hovering about the page ; the faint 
resolution, broken almost as surely as formed, not 
to speak of this trouble to our nearest and closest 
friend, and the ending in speaking of it, in our 
agony, to many besides. ! there is no aching, 
no shooting or throbbing pain of fibre or nerve 
that can (taken with its alternations) compare in 



1 68 ESSAYS. 

misery with this ! Even the anticipation becomes 
in time the worst, though the bodily pain is known 
to be real and unavoidable, while the ideal one is 
clearly seen to be baseless, or enormously exagge- 
rated. The close observer of a sick sufferer may 
see the drops stand on the forehead, and the 
quiver pass over the lip, at the bare thought of 
the certain return of a periodical pain ; but worse 
to endure is the sickening of the soul, at the 
certainty that at such an hour we shall be under 
the spiritual dominion of a haunting demon, the 
foe, as foolish as cruel, whom we defy now with 
our reason, but shall then succumb to in every 
faculty. Here is an ordeal for the proud ! yet it 
is not less fearful to the humble ; for the humble 
can no more dispense with self-respect than the 
proud. 

Some may wonder at such a history of an 
unknown trouble, — some who, when anything 
harasses them, mount a horse, and gallop over the 
sea-sands or the race-course, or visit their friends 
or the theatre, or resort to music, or romp with 
children. Let them remember that we cannot do 
these things, — that the very weakness which sub- 
jects us to these troubles, forbids our escape from 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM. 169 

them. We know, as well as they, that if once we 
could feel the open air upon our brows, our feet on 
the grass, our bodies in exercise and vigour, all 
would be well with us ; but, as we cannot use 
these remedies, the knowledge is of no immediate 
avail. If we can get to the window and look 
abroad, that is well, as far as it goes ; but we are 
most subject to our tyrant in the night, and in 
midwinter, — at times when we cannot look abroad ; 
and it may even happen, too, that the tyrant dims 
the sun at noon-day, and blots out the landscape, 
or renders us blind to it. What then is to be 
done ? We evade the misery, when we can, by 
stirring books, (the most objective that can be 
had), or by seeing what we can of the world 
by the telescope, or by resorting to some sweet 
familiar spring of poetry ; but this last expedient 
is impaired by the fear of mixing painful associa- 
tions with pleasures too sacred and dear to be 
endangered. Or we defy the foe in reckless 
anguish, or we endure in silent patience. 

But there is something far better to be done,— 
not always ; but still, not seldom. We can turn 
the forces of ideas against themselves — meet them 
with their own weapons. We can call in the 

i 



170 ESSAYS. 

power of an idea to overcome the tyranny of 
another idea ; and then we come off conquerors, 
and with a soul-felt joy. 

It is a joy to recur, in memory or imagination, 
to any moral conflict, past or possible, in which 
all our faculties are needed, and wherein that 
force is at least conceived to be employed which 
must otherwise corrode us. But if any such 
enterprise actually presents itself — confronts us at 
the moment — how great is the blessing ! It may 
bring toil and difficulty to ourselves, and doubt and 
blame from others ; but if it be clear to ourselves, 
how keen is the sense of life it gives at some 
seasons, though it may overpower our weakness 
at others ! It seems hard, when we are feeble 
and suffering, to have irksome labour to do, to 
have to oppose the wishes and feelings of some 
whom we love, and to arouse argument when our 
longing is for unbroken and lasting rest : but, if 
our duty be but clear to ourselves, (or for the 
most part clear, with doubts only in our most 
sickly hours,) what a new position we find our- 
selves in, permitted once more to take the offensive 
side against evil, in alternation with the weary 
perpetual defensive posture ! Happy they, who 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM. 171 

have been brought up in allegiance to Duty, more 
or less strict ; and happiest they whose loyalty 
has been the strictest ! In the hour of nature's 
feebleness, and apparent decay, they find them- 
selves under the eye and hand of the Physician of 
souls, who has for them a cordial of heavenly 
virtue — of heavenly virtue for them, but of no 
virtue to such as have let their moral nature take 
its chance, and who, in their hour of extreme 
need, are no more capable of spiritual enterprise 
than of a bodily flight beyond the precincts of 
their pain. They must languish in self-corrosion ; 
while they who happily find how Duty gives 
" power to the faint," " mount up with wings 
as eagles." With every emergency of singular 
or unpopular moral action, every occasion for 
saying with courage a true word, or advocating a 
neglected cause — with every opportunity, in short, 
of spiritual enterprise, they soar afresh, and their 
eyes kindle anew in the light of life. 

But this kind of solace could not be, — nor any 
effectual kind, — but for the power of the master 
idea of our life. But for Him who " stirreth up 
the nest," and whose spirit Ci taketh and beareth 
them up " sunwards on her wings, the flights of 

i 2 



172 ESSAYS. 

these eagle spirits would utterly fail. But for the 
ideas inspired by Faith, there could be no enter- 
prise, no true solace, no endurance but of the low, 
merely submissive kind. Great is the power of 
all thought, congenial with our nature, over 
disease of body and morbid tendencies of the 
mind ; but those which connect us with the Maker 
of our frame and the Ordainer of our lot are 
absolutely omnipotent. O ! let the speculative 
observer of human nature consider well, and 
observe that human nature to its extremest limits, 
before he pronounces that our spirits are not 
created filial. Let him ponder well the universal 
aspiration towards a spiritually-discerned parent, 
before he declares the affection a mere venerable 
superstition. Let him feel in health and full 
action, — (or, if he feels it not, let him detect in 
others,) the pausing horror of a sense of orphan- 
hood, beneath which the moral universe falls in 
pieces under the hands of its myriad builders. 
Let him see in the sick-chamber, where the 
outward and inward world seem alike to the 
sufferer to be crumbling asunder, how irresistible 
is the conviction of an upholding power, new- 
modelling all decaying things, and imbuing them 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM. 173 

with immortality. If he himself can but learn 
what protracted sickness is, let him ponder well 
whether a superstition, however early and so- 
lemnly conveyed and cherished, could stand the 
stress, — not merely of pain, but of the questionings 
prompted by pain. Let him say if it can be 
anything but truth, — absolute congeniality with 
our souls, — which can give such all- conquering 
power to the idea of our filial relation to the 
Ruler of all things. 

No one will venture to say how this power is 
enhanced by the earliest associations. No one 
will presume to declare precisely how happy above 
others are they, now sufferers, whose infant speech 
was practised in prayer at a mother's knee, and 
who can now forget the dreariness of the night 
and the weight of the day in listening for the 
echoes of old psalmody, and reviving snatches of 
youthful hymns and religious reverie. No one 
will dare to say how far the sweet call to " the 
weary and heavy laden " is endeared by the voice 
of the Shepherd having gone before us over all 
the hills and vales of our life. But the true phi- 
losopher must, as it seems to me, be assured that 
the power of these spiritual appeals would ooze 



174 ESSAYS. 

away, in proportion as our faculties are weakened 
by disease, if they had not in them the divine 
force of truth to urge them home. 

See what this force is, in comparison with others 
that are tendered for our solace ! One and another, 
and another, of our friends comes to us with an 
earnest pressing upon us of the " hope of relief," 
—that talisman which looks so well till its virtues 
are tried ! They tell us of renewed health and 
activity, — of what it will be to enjoy ease again, — 
to be useful again, — to shake off our troubles and 
be as we once were. We sigh, and say it may be 
so ; but they see that we are neither roused nor 
soothed by it. 

Then one speaks differently, — tells us we shall 
never be better, — that we shall continue for long 
years as we are, or shall sink into deeper disease 
and death ; adding, that pain and disturbance and 
death are indissolubly linked with the indestructible 
life of the soul, and supposing that we are willing 
to be conducted on in this eternal course by Him 
whose thoughts and ways are not as ours, — but 
whose tenderness .... Then how we burst in, 
and take up the word ! What have we not to say, 
from the abundance of our hearts, of that be- 



POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM. 175 

nignity, — that transcendant wisdom, — our willing- 
ness, — our eagerness, — our sweet security, — till 
we are silenced by our unutterable joy ! 

Whence this imbecility of the " hope of relief ? " 
Whence this power of the idea of God our 
Father ? 

Do we know of anything stronger and higher 
than ideas ? In the strongest and highest, — (even 
an omnipotent and infinite) idea, — if we have not 
Truth, what is Truth ? 



176 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 



' ' But few that court retirement are aware 
Of half the toils they must encounter there." Cowper. 

' We are not to repine, hut we may lawfully struggle." Johnson. 



I desire to notice, very briefly, some perils and 
pains of our condition, — briefly premising that, as 
only the initiated can fully sympathise, it will be 
sufficient, and therefore best, to indicate rather 
than expatiate. 

We are in ever-growing danger of becoming too 
abstract, — of losing our sympathy with passing 
emotions, — and particularly with those shared by 
numbers. There was a time when we went to 
public worship with others,— -to the theatre, — to 
public meetings ; when we were present at picnic 
parties and other festivals, and heard general 
conversation every day of our lives. Now, we are 
too apt to forget those times. The danger is, lest 
we should get to despise them, and to fancy 
ourselves superior to our former selves, because 
now we feel no social transports. 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 177 

A lesser danger is that of fearing to experience 
emotions. If a barrel-organ makes itself heard 
from the street, — or a salute, on anniversaries, 
from the castle, — or a crowd gathers on the ridge 
to enjoy a regatta, — what a strange thrill comes over 
us ! What a shrinking from being moved ! How we 
wonder when we recal some discourse, whereby the 
voice of the preacher roused the souls of a multi- 
tude at once, — or when we awake within us the 
echoes of some Easter anthem, or of the Hallelujah 
Chorus in Westminster Abbey, — or when we 
image to ourselves a crowded theatre, when one 
tragic fear or horror bound together all the spirits 
that came for pleasure ! When we try to imagine 
a flow of talk in which minds uttered themselves 
without thought of individuals ; — when we revive 
these scenes of our former lives, we gasp for 
breath, — we wonder what we could have been 
made of to endure the excitement; — we are 
certain that we should die on the spot if we 
encountered it now. It might be so : but we 
must remember that our present condition is the 
morbid one, and not the former. We must keep 
up our sympathies, as far as we may, by cherish- 
ing such festal feelings as may survive ; and ever 

i 3 



178 ESSAYS. 

remembering that our grave, and solid, and abstract 
life is adapted to only a portion of our nature, 
and that our exclusion from spontaneous emotions, 
— from all experience of sympathetic transport- 
is a heavy misfortune, under which it behoves us 
to humble ourselves. 

Those of us are well off who have, like myself, 
the advantage of some outward symbol which serves 
as communication between them and the world. 
Flags are my resource of this kind. Little do 
those who hoist them imagine how a hidden invalid 
appropriates their signals ! The Union Jack on 
the flag-staff, in the castle-yard, marks Sunday to 
me in a way I would not miss. When I look abroad 
on Sabbath mornings, it tells of rest and church- 
going ; and it is a matter of serious business with 
me to see it brought down at sunset, — a mute 
token in which there is more pathos than I could 
tell. And then the flags on the churches of the 
opposite shore on festal days tell me of a stirring 
holiday world, — make me hear again the Park 
and Tower guns, — show me fireworks and illumi- 
nations, and arouse something of the hum and 
buzz of a gay and moving crowd. Once more, 
the foreign flags hoisted by ships coming into 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 179 

port, — mere signals for pilots in intention, — speak, 
unknown to any one, a world of things to me. I 
learned them long ago, by heart, and with my 
heart. When I see a foreign vessel come bound- 
ing towards the harbour, and perceive, the 
moment she hoists her flag, whether she has cut 
across from a Norway fiord, or has contested her 
way from the Levant, or found a path from the 
far Indies, or brings greetings from some familiar 
American port, — what a boon is that flag to me ! 
Sometimes I point my telescope, to see the sailors' 
lips move in the utterance of a foreign tongue : 
at all events, I see in a moment the peaks of 
Sulitelma or of the Andes, or the summits of the 
Ghauts, or tropical sands, or chilly pine forests 
spread before me, or palmy West Indian groves. 
It is morally good, and unspeakably refreshing, 
to have some such instrumentality of signals with 
the world without, as these flags are to me. 

There is a corresponding danger, though a less 
serious one, in such sympathy as we have making 
us repine. Though we may go on from month 
to month without one momentary wish that things 
were otherwise with us than as they are, yet, on 
occasion — once, perhaps, in a year — some incident 



180 ESSAYS. 

wakens a thrill of longing to be as we once were. 
Some notice of a concert, or a picture, brings 
up the associations of a London spring, with all 
its intellectual and social pleasures : — or the mere 
mention of a lane or hedge, at the moment the 
March sun is shining in, recals the first hunting 
for violets in our days of long walks : — or a 
foreign post-mark in autumn transports us to 
Alpine passes or the shores of Italian lakes ; and 
a sickly longing for scenes we shall see no more 
comes over us. But the reaction is so rapid and 
sure, that there is little moral peril in this — only 
the evanescent pain, which gives place to that 
act of acquiescence which has in it more joy than 
can be gathered from all the lanes, mountains, and 
shores of the globe. 

The occasional sense of our being too weak 
for the ordinary incidents of life, is strangely dis- 
tressing. The cry of an infant makes us wretched 
for hours after, in spite of every effort of reason. 
I saw, through my telescope, two big boys 
worrying a little one, and I could not look to see 
the end of it. They were so far off that there was 
nothing to be done. The distress to me was such 
— the picture of the lives of the three boys was 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 181 

so vivid — that I felt as if I had no reason nor 
courage left. The same sort of distress recurred, 
but in a more moderate degree, when I saw a 
gentleman do a thing which I wish could dwell on 
his mind as it does upon mine. I saw, through 
the same telescope, a gentleman pick up from 
the grass, where children had been playing the 
moment before, under the walls of the fort, a 
gay harlequin — one of those toy-figures whose 
limbs jerk with a string. He carried it to his 
party, a lady and another gentleman, sitting on a 
bench at the top of the rocks, whose base the sea 
was washing. When he had shown off the jer kings 
of the toy sufficiently, he began to take aim with 
it, as if to see how far he could throw. " He 
never will," thought I, " throw that toy into the 
sea, while there are stones lying all about within 
reach ! " He did it ! Away whirled harlequin 
through the air far into the sea below : and there 
was no appearance of any remonstrance on the 
part of his companions ! I could not look again 
towards the grass, to see the misery of the little 
owner of the toy on finding it gone. There was 
no comfort in the air of genteel complacency with 
which the three gentry walked down from the 



182 ESSAYS. 

rocks, after this magnanimous deed. How glad 
should I be if this page should ever meet the eye 
of any one of them, and strike a late remorse into 
them! To me the incident brought back the 
passions of my childhood — the shock I have never 
got over to this hour — on reading that too torturing 
story of Miss Edgeworth's, about the footman, 
who " broke off all the bobbins, and put them in 
his pocket, rolled the weaving-pillow down the 
dirty lane, jumped up behind his lady's carriage, 
and was out of sight in an instant." I think these 
must be the words, for they burnt themselves in 
upon my childish brain, and have stirred me with 
passion many a time since ; as this harlequin 
adventure will ever do. 

Many will wonder at all this — will despise such 
sensitiveness to trifles, considering what deeds are 
done every day in the world. They do not know 
the pains and penalties of sickness — that is all: 
and it may do them no harm to learn what they 
are, while my fellow-sufferers may find some 
comfort in an honest recognition of them. 

This sensitiveness takes worse directions, how- 
ever, and inflicts more misery still. It subjects 
some of us to a scrupulosity, particularly about 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 183 

truth, which brings endless troubles. Every 
mistake of fact that we happen to know of afflicts 
us as if we were responsible for it, — and more 
than it ought if we were so responsible. We 
tend to an absurd restlessness to set everything 
right; and of course, above all, what concerns 
ourselves. If any kind friend pities us too much, 
and praises us for our patience under sufferings 
which he supposes to be greater than we are 
actually enduring, we remonstrate, and explain, 
as if his sympathy were not good for him and 
us, at any rate ; and as if, having told only truth 
ourselves, it could matter much how our troubles 
are rated — whether over or under. We call up 
images of all who suffer far more than our- 
selves, and implore him to go and pity them 
— to honour them and not us. If he smiles and 
answers, well, he will go and pity and honour 
them — but he must be sorry for us, too — we smile, 
also, at our own scrupulosity, though we see in 
it only a new symptom of disease. 

There is yet a worse direction taken by this 
sensitiveness — both morally and in experience 
worse. Though our observation of life encourages 
hope, on the whole, to a boundless extent, both as 



184 ESSAYS. 

to affairs and to human character, it teaches some 
truths about individual characters which are almost 
too much for our weakened condition. It may be 
absurd — it may be wrong — to be more afflicted 
about the faults and failings of the best and most 
beloved people, than about the vices and gross 
follies of a lower order of men ; but such affliction 
is, to us, quite inevitable. It is not wholly irra- 
tional ; for it is a melancholy sight to witness the 
encroachment of any bad habit of mind in those 
who should be outgrowing such bad habits, instead 
of being mastered by them. But we know it to be 
the common order of things that every man, even 
the best, carries about with him through life some 
fault or failing (the shadowy side of his brightest 
quality, if nothing worse), and that it is the rarest 
thing in the world to see any strong tendency 
overcome after the age of resolution, the youthful 
season of moral heroism, is past : yet, knowing this, 
it is not the less painful to witness it, with the 
clearness and strength with which the spectacle 
offers itself to us, on our post of observation. 
While working in the world, side by side with 
those whose doings we now contemplate, we were 
willing to be deceived in each particular instance ; 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 185 

willing to expect that the judgment and action of 
those we loved and clung to would, in each case, 
be accordant with their best gifts and graces ; and, 
however often disappointed, we made allowance 
for the known frailty, and inconsistently hoped 
it would be better next time. We now see too 
clearly to be deceived. With the discernment of 
love, and the power of leisure, we can accurately 
calculate the allowance to be made — we can pre- 
cisely measure the obliquity beforehand — and save 
ourselves at least from disappointment. But there 
is no solace in this. There is more pain in the 
proof of the permanent character of faults (per- 
manence including inevitable growth), than in 
perpetual new evidence of their existence ; more 
sorrow in our prophetic power now than in our 
credulous weakness of old. The accurate readers 
of human character may be admired and envied 
for their infallible knowledge of how men will 
think and act ; but, if they have a true heart-love 
for those whom they watch, they cannot much 
enjoy their power. If they have not love, neither 
can they be happy ; so that it requires a penetra- 
tive knowledge indeed, into the ways of God as 
well as man, for such skill to be reconcileable with 



186 ESSAYS. 

peace and with our human affections. It is a 
burdensome knowledge for us to wield, in our 
weakened condition, and one which it requires an 
ever-strengthening faith to convert into a nourisher 
of love. 

The faults I have alluded to are such only as 
are compatible with general sincerity — such as 
have a character of frailty. Those which include 
tendencies essentially low — untruth, double- 
dealing, and selfish policy — assume so disgusting 
an aspect, when tested by the trying light and 
amidst the solemn leisure of the sick-room, that it 
cannot be wrong to follow willingly the irresistible 
leadings of nature — to dismiss them with loathing, 
and invite to our arms the simple and heroic sin- 
cerity, and the cheerful devotedness to the honour 
of God and the interests of man, which here 
assume much of the radiance in which they come 
back in vision from beyond the grave. If it be 
true that our moral taste becomes more sensitive 
in our seclusion, I trust that such sensitiveness 
has not necessarily any fastidiousness in it, but 
that its relish of good grows in full proportion to 
its discipline. I trust that if its disgust deepens as 
the low and cowardly order of faults are stripped 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 187 

to nakedness, so does its appreciation become more 
expanded and generous in regard to qualities 
which befit our heroic and aspiring nature and 
destination. 

As for our best resource under the liabilities I 
have alluded to, a mere reference will suffice. 
" Whatsoever things are honest, pure, holy, 
lovely— to think on these things ;" to fill our souls 
with conceptions of the god-like, so that our 
sensitiveness may turn in time to a keen appre- 
hension of all that is in affinity with these ; this is 
what we have to do — partly for present solace, 
and much more for the chance of converting our 
weakness into power — our mortal discipline into a 
heavenly habitude. 

As for the ordinary and familiar sufferings and 
dangers of our state, the weariness of life which 
every one but the physician wonders at, often as 
it is witnessed ; the longing for non-existence, 
which some pious people, who admit no bodily 
origin of any mental affection, are very much 
shocked at; the despair during protracted violent 
pain, which, however, being dumb, is seldom 
known at the moment — these cannot be illustrated, 
nor remedied, by anything that can be said on 



188 ESSAYS. 

paper. One can only suggest to the sufferer, and 
to wise nurses, that in the power of ideas we are 
furnished with an implement of natural magic 
which may possibly operate at the most hopeless 
times. It was in a sort of despair that the father 
of the lame child, inconsiderately led out too far, 
gave the boy his stick to ride home on ; whereupon 
the aching foot actually traversed the needful 
mile without being felt to ache. So the wise 
nurse may possibly find that a nobler idea than 
any hope of rest or relief may reanimate a spirit 
under a far severer pain. And assuredly there 
are some who could tell how, in the midst of 
anguish, the briefest suggestion of endurance, the 
slightest spiritual touch upon deep filial affections, 
has made a miraculous truce for them with torment 
and despair. 

Observers of the sick think very seriously of 
their liability to become wedded to their own ways, 
and engrossed by their own occupations. The 
fact is as they see it ; but it would be happy for 
us if we had no worse mistakes to apprehend. 
Those of the sequestered who may re-enter the 
world will be pretty sure to fall in love with new 
ways and employments, and to feel a quite suffi- 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 189 

cient disgust with their own. And if they are 
never to re-enter life, is it not well for them that 
they can spend some energies, which would other- 
wise be corrosive, upon outward things ? If their 
souls are too narrow and purblind to live beyond 
the bounds of their abode, the best thing for them 
is to get through the rest of their time as easily as 
they can, in the way that suits them best. If they 
are of a higher order, their observers may be 
assured of two things — that their investment of 
energy on the ways and occupations of their 
singular and trying life, is no more than a needful 
absorption of a power which would otherwise 
destroy them ; and also, that there is no fear of 
these things becoming indispensable to them or 
sufficient for them. There are hours, witnessed 
by no observers, when they find it wise to desist 
from their most esteemed employments, in con- 
descension to their own weakness, and recognise 
in this discipline the lesson of the day. There 
are hours, witnessed by no observers, when the 
insufficiency of such objects is felt as keenly and 
pressingly as by the Missionary on his way to the 
heathen, or the Prime Minister with the interests 
of nations in the balance before his eyes — or by 



190 ESSAYS. 

the drowning man before whose soul life lies 
pictured in the instant of time which remains to 
him. This liability, though real, is insignificant 
and transient, compared with many others. 

There is a safeguard against it, too, in our own 
weakness. There is even, for some, a danger of 
growing absolutely idle, from a sense of the little- 
ness of what they can do. Formerly they acted 
on the rule — " not a day without a line," and now, 
thrown out of their habit by the absolute incapacity 
of some days, and disheartened by the small show 
made by their utmost rational diligence, they give 
up, and do nothing, — or nothing with regularity. 
This is a fearful danger. Nowhere are habits of 
regular employment more necessary than in such 
a life as ours; and, if we cannot preserve the 
absolute erectness of rationality, — if we must lean 
to the error of particularity or of indifference — I 
have no doubt of the former being the safer of the 
two ; — the least injurious, and the most curable 
under a change of influences. 

One of our most humbling and trying liabilities 
I do not remember to have seen mentioned any- 
where, though it is so common and so deeply felt, 
that I have no doubt of a response from every 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 191 

sick prisoner (of a considerate mind), whose eye 
will fall upon this page. I mean our unfitness for 
doubtful moral enterprise. For doubtful moral 
enterprise, let it be observed. Where the case is 
clear, where the right appears to our own eyes to 
be all on one side, whatever may be on the other, 
moral enterprise becomes our best medicine ; it 
becomes health and new life to us, as I have else- 
where said, be the responsibility and the immediate 
consequences to ourselves what they may. But 
when the case is not so clear, when we are pressed 
(as all conscientious people, sick or well, strong or 
feeble, are at times) by antagonist considerations 
of duty, we cannot, as in our vigorous days, take 
a part in some clear hour, and strengthen ourselves 
to bear recurring doubts, and to take cheerfully 
even conviction of mistake, if experience should 
prove our conscientious decision to have been 
unsound. We are not in a condition to bear 
recurring doubts, or to take cheerfully a conviction 
of moral mistake. Our duty, in our depressed 
circumstances, is to avoid such moral disturbance 
as we have not force to quell. We must, in 
submission and compassion to our own weakness, 
evade a decision if we honestly can ; and if we 



192 ESSAYS. 

cannot, we must accept of help — human help — and 
proceed upon the opinion of the soundest and 
most enlightened mind we can appeal to. 

If there are any who lift the eyebrows, and 
shrug the shoulders at the supposition of this 
case, and declare that there is infallible direction 
to be found, in all particular cases, in the prin- 
ciples of religion, in answer to prayer, in the 
guidance of clergy, or the general opinion of man- 
kind, I warn such that they will discover, sooner 
or later, that there is yet something for them to 
learn of morals, of the human mind, and of God's 
discipline of humanity. 

There is no point of which I am more sure 
than that it is unwise in sick people to keep a 
diary. Some suppose this task to be one of the 
duties of the sick-room ; whereas I am confident 
that it is one of the most dangerous of snares. The 
traveller, moving from scene to scene in high 
health and spirits, keeps a diary ; he looks at it a 
few years after, and can scarcely believe his own 
eyes when he sees how many entries there are of 
his hunger, thirst, and sleepiness. He searches 
anxiously for a record of some fact, important to 
the determination of a truth in science— some fact 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 193 

of which he has a vague impression; he cannot 
find it, but finds in its stead that he was chilly 
on that morning, or went to bed hungry that 
night. If it be so in his case, how should the 
journal of a sick-room avoid becoming a register 
of the changes of a morbid state ? Not only this ; 
but it can scarcely contain anything better. The 
experiencing and recording instruments them- 
selves, the mind and body, are in a morbid 
condition, and cannot be trusted to perceive and 
record faithfully. Moreover, our tendency is, at 
the best, to an intense and growing self-conscious- 
ness, and our efforts should, therefore, be directed 
to having our minds called out of themselves — to 
causing our days to pass away as little marked as 
possible. A diary of public events, a register of 
books read, or of the opinions of those whose 
opinions are valuable on the great questions of 
the time, may be more . or less amusing and 
profitable to keep ; but then the rule should be 
absolute to exclude all mention of ourselves : 
and my own belief is, that it is wisest to avoid 
the temptation altogether — to keep clear of all 
bondage to ourselves and to habit that can be 
declined. 



194 ESSAYS. 

I was unutterably moved, lately, by the reading 
of a diary, preserved in MS., of one of the most 
innocent, holy, and devoted of God's human chil- 
dren ; a creature who entered upon life endowed 
with good gifts, spiritual, intellectual, and external, 
and who wasted away in body, dwindled away in 
mind, and sank early to the grave, clearly through 
the force given by superstition to a corroding 
self-consciousness, to which she was by constitution 
liable. Her diary yields clear lessons which 
might profitably be made known, but that they 
are not apparently recognised by those who had 
the charge of herself in life, and hold her papers 
now. Among these lessons, one is to our present 
purpose. Her diary became more and more a 
register of frames and feelings, each mood of which 
was fearfully important to herself as a token of 
God's dispositions towards her. To an eye which 
now reads the whole at once, side by side with 
the dates and incidents of her life, nothing can be 
clearer than that the risings and fallings of her 
spiritual state exactly corresponded with the con- 
dition of her health. In one portion, the record 
becomes almost too painful to be borne. While 
her days were passed in heavenly deeds, and her 



SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM. 195 

solitude in prayer, she sinks daily lower and lower 
in hope and cheer : and at last, after a record of 
most mournful humiliation, we find a notice which 
explains all — of the breaking of a blood-vessel. 
To us it is nothing strange to experience fluctua- 
tions of more than spirits — of heart and soul, 
and to ascertain, after a time, that they were 
owing to physical causes. We even anticipate 
these changes, and know that when we awake in 
the morning, we shall be harassed by such and 
such a thought ; that at such an hour of the day 
we shall suffer under remorse for such and such 
an old act and word, or under fear of the con- 
sequences of conduct which, at other seasons, we 
know to be right. "We have that to tell of our- 
selves, which seems as a key to the mournful 
diary I have mentioned. This experience, and 
such warnings as that which has so deeply moved 
me, should teach us the wisdom and duty of 
not cherishing — by recording — our personal cares, 
but rather of "casting them upon Him who 
careth for us." The most fitting sick-room 
aspiration is to attain to a trusting carelessness 
as to what becomes of our poor dear selves, 
while we become more and more engrossed by 

k2 



196 ESSAYS. 

the vast interests which our Father is conducting 
within our view, from the birdie which builds 
under our eaves, to the gradual gathering of 
the nations towards the fold of Christy on the 
everlasting hills. 



197 



SOME GAINS AND SWEETS OF INVALIDISM. 



"God Ahnif 
There is a soul of goo mess in things evil. 
Would men :.-..--- UstSif : ..: Shakspkrb. 

• •' Yet have they special pleasures, even mirth. 

By those undreamt of who have only trod 

Life's valley smooth ; and if the rolling earth 

To their nice ear have many a painful tone. 

They know man does not live by joy alone. 

But by the presence of the power of God." Milne-. 

•• But here we are:— that is a great fact : and. if we tarry little, e may 
come to learn that here is best. See to it only that thyseli is here; and art 
and nature, hope and dread, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not 
be absent from the chamber where thou sittest " Emz.- - 



It is harder to be brief about our gains and 
privileges than about our peculiar troubles : but 
I must try to be so ; for the discoveries we make. 
though to us all glowing with freshness and beautv. 
are. to those who merely receive them,, as trite as 
any old moralities whatever. 

One great and strange blessing to us is. the abo- 
lition of the future — of our own future in this life. 

It is commonly thought a chief privilege of 
childhood, that it is passed without thought of the 
future — that the present is all in all. I doubt 



198 ESSAYS. 

the truth of this. My own experience in child- 
hood was of a painful and incessant longing for 
the future— a longing which enhanced all its 
innumerable pains, and embittered many of its 
pleasures— a longing for strength of body and of 
mind, for independence of action— for an escape, 
in short, from the conditions of childhood. The 
privilege which I then missed I have found now. 
Let it be a comfort to all sorrowing friends of 
those who are under any sort of doom without an 
assigned period to know, that in such cases the 
sense of doom vanishes. When the future becomes 
a blank to us, it becomes presently invisible. And 
when we sustain this change we do not contract 
in our desires and interests, but, I humbly hope, 
the contrary. The thoughts which stretched 
forwards, with eagerness and anxiety, now spread 
themselves abroad, more calmly and with more 
disinterestedness. There is danger of our losing 
sympathy with the young, the healthy, the ambi- 
tious ; for we soon require to be reminded of those 
states of mind, and those classes of interests which 
involve ambition, or any kind of personal regard 
to the future : but, if we can preserve these 
sympathies, it does appear to me that the change 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 199 

is, to ourselves, pure gain. The image of five, 
ten, twenty years of our present life, or decline 
into deeper suffering, ending in death, makes 
absolutely no impression upon us. We have not 
the slightest movement of a wish that it were 
otherwise ; — we do not turn our heads half round 
to see if there be no way of escape : and this 
is because our interests are all occupied with 
immediate and pressing objects, in which we 
have ascertained our true life to consist. Of 
these objects we would not surrender one for the 
permission to go back to the most brilliant point of 
our lives. Wealth would be a trouble to us — a 
responsibility we would rather decline; and it 
is astonishing to us that any man can wish for 
more than is needed to furnish his children well 
for the probation of life. Ambition and its objects 
(of course, not including usefulness) appear to us 
so much voluntarily incurred bondage and fatigue. 
Subjection to the opinions of men — a dependence 
on their suffrages for any heartfelt object — seems 
a slavery so humbling and so unnecessary, that we 
could hardly wonder sufficiently at it, but for the 
recollection that all human desires and passions 
are the instruments by which the work of the race 



200 ESSAYS. 

is done, and that ambition is far from being among 
the lowest of these instruments. Those of us who 
had known formerly, for a sufficient length of 
time, what it was to have fame, did not need to be 
laid by to discover how soon and how thoroughly 
it becomes disregarded (except for its collateral 
privileges), and left behind among our forgotten 
objects of desire : but our present position is the 
best for following out its true history — for tracing 
that path a reach beyond the point where moralists 
commonly leave it. The young aspirant is warned 
betimes, without practical effect, that the privileges 
of obscurity are irrecoverable : that, when he has 
become famous, he may long in vain for the quiet 
shelter of privacy that he has left. He feels this, 
with a sense of panic, when he has gained the 
celebrity he longs for, and is undergoing his first 
agonies from adverse opinion. If he would but 
believe us, we watchers could tell him that, though 
he can never retreat into his original privacy, 
there is a yet more complete shelter before him, 
if he does not linger, or take up his rest short 
of his journey's end. This shelter is not to be 
found in indifference, in contempt for human 
opinion — that ugly mask behind which some strive 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 201 

to hide the workings of an agonised countenance, 
while the scorchings of scorn beat fiercely on 
their brains, and the jeerings of ridicule torture 
their ears. There is no rest, no shelter, in 
contempt: and human opinion can never be 
naturally despised, though it has no claim to any 
man's allegiance. The true and welcome ultimate 
shelter of the celebrated is in great interests — great 
objects. If they use the power their fame puts 
into their hands for the furtherance of any of 
the great ends for which Providence is operating, 
they find themselves by degrees in possession once 
more of the external freedom, the internal quiet, 
the genuine privacy of soul, which they believed 
forfeited for ever, while the consciousness of the 
gaze of the world was upon them. They read 
what is said of themselves in print just as if it was 
said of any other person, if it be laudatory ; and 
with a quieter feeling still if it be adverse, as I 
shall presently describe. 

It is sometimes said, that it is a pity when great 
men do not happen to die on the completion of 
the one grand achievement of their lives, instead 
of taming down the effect by living on afterwards 
like common men ; — that Clarkson should have 

k3 



202 ESSAYS. 

died on the abolition of the slave-trade, — Howard 
after his first or second journey, — Scott on the 
publication of his best romance, — and so on. But 
there is a melo-dramatic air about such a wish, 
which appears childish to moral speculators. We 
are glad to have Clarkson still, to honour freshly 
in his old age. We see more glory about the 
head of John Quincy Adams contending, as a 
Representative in Congress, for popular rights, 
than he ever wore as President of the United 
States. We should be glad that Eowland Hill 
should live and work as a common man for a 
quarter of a century after the complete reali- 
sation of his magnificent boon to society. In 
truth, we behold great men entering early upon 
their heaven, when we see them tranquilly retired, 
or engaged in common labours, after their most 
memorable task is accomplished. The worthiest 
of celebrated men would, I believe, be found, if 
their meditations could be read, anticipating with 
the highest satisfaction, as the happiest part of 
their prospect beyond the grave, their finding a 
level condition once more — being encompassed 
by equals — or, as the popular preacher puts it, 
starting fair from the new post. Such being 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 203 

the natural desire of simple hearts, there is a 
pleasure to spectators in seeing them, while still 
here, encompassed with fellowship — not set above, 
nor apart, though enjoying the natural recompenses 
of their deeds. 

The words " natural recompenses" remind me 
of another gain conferred on us by our condition 
— scarcely separable, perhaps, from those I have 
mentioned — from the extinction of all concern 
about our future in this world, and the ordinary 
objects of pursuit; but yet to us so conspicuous, 
so heartfelt, as to demand record as a blessing 
by itself. I mean the conviction of the hollowness 
of all talk of reward for conduct ; — the conviction 
of the essential blessedness of goodness. What 
can appear more trite? Where is the church 
or chapel in which it is not preached every 
Sunday? Yet we, who heard and believed 
through all the Sundays and week-days of many 
years, seem but now to have known this truth. 
Our knowledge is now tested by the indifference 
with which we behold men struggling for other 
objects, under a sort of insanity, as it appears 
to us, while the interests which animate us to 
sympathy are those of the pure in heart, seeing 



204 ESSAYS. 

God before they die ; and the dread which chills 
our souls is for the multitude who live in passion 
and die in moral insensibility. To us it appears 
so obviously the supreme good to have a healthy 
soul serenely reposing in innocence, and spon- 
taneously working for God and man, that all 
divergence of aims from this end seems madness, 
and all imagery of rewards for moral desert the 
most profane of mockeries. It is a matter of 
wonder to us, that we ever conceived of royalty 
otherwise than as a title to compassion ; of heredi- 
tary honours, as desirable ; of fame, as an end ; and 
we are apt to wonder at others, in their turn, that 
they do not perceive the most blessed of our race 
to be the moral reformers of each age, passing 
" from strength to strength," although wearing 
out in their enterprise, and the placid well-doers, 
whether high or lowly in their service. The 
appendages themselves of such a state — the esteem, 
honour, and love which wait upon moral desert — 
almost vanish from our notice when we are con- 
templating the infinite blessedness of the peace of 
a holy heart. 

Then we have (not to dwell on a matter already 
spoken of) a peculiar privilege in the peculiar 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 205 

loveliness which the image of Death assumes to us. 
In our long leisure, all sweet and soothing associa- 
tions of rest, — of relief from anxiety and wearing 
thought, — of re-entrance upon society, — (a society 
how sanctified!) — of the realisation of our best 
conceptions of what is holy, noble, and perfect, — 
all affections, all aspirations gather round the idea 
of Death, till it recurs at all our best moments, 
and becomes an abiding thought of peace and joy. 
When we hear or read of the departure of any 
one we knew, — of the death even of the youngest 
or the most active, — a throb of congratulatory 
feeling is our first emotion, rather than the shock 
which we used to experience, and which we now 
see sustained by those around us. Reflection, or 
tidings of survivors may change our view ; but so 
does the image of Death become naturally en- 
deared to us, that our first spontaneous thought is 
of favour to those who are selected for it. I am 
not recommending this impression as rational, but 
intimating it as characteristic of a peculiar condi- 
tion. It is no slight privilege, however, to have 
that great idea which necessarily confronts every 
one of us all clothed with loveliness instead of 
horror, or mere mystery. Till now, we never 



206 



ESSAYS. 



knew how any anticipation may be incessantly 
filling with sweetness. 

It may be doubted whether there is a more 
heartfelt peace experienced at any point of our 
moral progress than in the right reception of 
calumnious injury. In the immediate return from 
the first recoil into the mood of forgiveness, there 
is something heavenly even to the novice. In the 
compassion for one's calumniator there is pain; 
and it is a pain which increases with experience 
of life, and with our insight into the peril and 
misery of an unjust and malicious habit of mind; 
but in the act of pitying forgiveness, there is a 
solace so sweet as to make one wonder how long 
men will be in adopting this remedy for their 
injuries. Any one who has been ambitious, and 
with success, will, if he be wise, be ready to declare 
that not the first breath of fame was to him so sweet 
as the first emotions of forgiveness, the first stirrings 
of the love of enemies, after his earliest experience 
of the calumny by which all public effort is 
sure to be assailed. I am not supposing cowardly 
acquiescence in insult and injury. I am supposing 
the due self-assertion made, or defence found not 
to be practicable. This is all that others have to 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 207 

do with. A mairs self-communion on the matter 
is his own private affair' : and little know the 
systematic calumniators, who for party's or pre- 
judice's sake; assail those who can only return 
silence, how they really work in some hearts they 
seek to wound. In some they may excite rage or 
bitter anguish : but there are others. — probably 
many, — in which they cause no severer pain than 
a pitying sorrow for themselves, while they kindle 
a glow of courage, patience, and benignity, — they 
cause a more exquisite mingling of sweet emotions, 
— than were ever aroused by praise. The more 
defenceless the injured, the more private and the 
more heavenly are these passages of his soul : and 
none are more defenceless than sick prisoners. 
If subject to such injuries in the world, where 
they could by their presence perpetually live down 
false aspersions, (aspersions on their' opinions as 
well as on their conduct.) helpless indeed are 
they when living out of sight, dumb in regard to 
society and through the press. Then, if their 
party foes take the opportunity to assail and 
misrepresent their opinions and their- acts, those 
foes can have all their own way abroad in the 
world ; but the verv air of our sick-room turns 



208 ESSAYS. 

them from foes into best friends. After one 
moment's sickening at the poor malice and cow- 
ardice, our thoughts fix on the high and holy 
truths to which they direct us,— on the transience 
of error, — the nothingness of fame, in the serious 
passages of life, — the powerlessness of assaults 
from without while we possess ourselves, — till we 
end in a calm and sweet mood of contentedness 
for ourselves and affectionate intercession for the 
victims of angry passion or of sordid interests. 
It does not move us painfully to think of our 
helplessness, — to contemplate leaving life without 
explaining our opinions, or justifying our views 
and enterprises. What is just and true will abide 
and prevail ; and as for our claims to a share in 
the reputation, they seem in the sick-room worthy 
of only a smile. If we wrought for reputation, 
we must suffer, sooner or later, for the lowness of 
the aim ; and now may be our time for taking a 
new growth through pain. But if we wrought 
for truth and good, we are not susceptible of the 
venom of the party slanderer. His sting proves no 
sting, but a beneficial touch rousing in us many 
tender, and resolute, and benignant feelings. 
These may be awakened wherever such a touch 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 209 

Teaches us ; but nowhere perhaps so sensibly as 
in the privacy and lowliness of the sick-room. I 
need say nothing of the benefit brought to us, by 
the same act, in the sympathy of generous minds. 
Of the blessing of sympathy I have already said 
so much that I dare scarcely approach the subject 
again. And never, as all know, does ministering 
affection so abound as towards the injured. When 
injury and helplessness unite their claims, there is 
no end to the multitude of hearts that throng 
to defend and aid. They are far more than are 
needed ; for few — extremely few — are those who 
venture or who like to send the enmity of public 
life into the retreats of privacy. Very rare, I 
believe, is the species of men who insult when all 
the world knows there can be no reply. Still, 
such cases are witnessed ; and of their operation I 
have spoken. 

The greater number of invalids are under no 
such liability; but all may be subject to some 
injustice, — some misrepresentation which may 
reach their knowledge ; and their emotions, both 
of recoil and of renovation, may be like in kind, 
and even equal in degree, to those I have inti- 
mated. If occasions for forgiveness should arise, — 



210 



ESSAYS. 



(and to whom do they not?) — may its relish be as 
sweet to them as it assuredly is to some more 
extensively tried ! 

An inestimable gain from the longest sickness 
is the outgrowth of the scruples and other conflicts 
which constitute the chief evil of merely long 
sickness. Of some perils and pains of our condi- 
tion I have spoken, and I must therefore declare 
that there is a remedial influence in the very 
infirmity which appeared to create them. If it 
be but continued long enough, — if the struggle 
be not broken off before it is fairly exhausted, — 
victory will declare itself on the side of peace. 
We may be long in passing through the expe- 
rience of weakness, humiliation and submission ; 
but up, through acquiescence, we must rise, 
sooner or later, — true things separating them- 
selves infallibly from the transient, and all that is 
important revealing itself in its due proportions, 
till our vision is cleared and our hearts are at rest. 
If the invalid of five years can smile at some of 
the anxieties and scrupulosities of his first season 
of retreat, much more clear-sighted must the ten 
years' thinker be in regard to the snares and 
troubles of his early or midway term. If, amidst 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 211 

the gain, as little as possible be lost, the privileges 
of our state may be such, — not as, indeed, to 
compare with those of health and a natural mode 
of life, — but as may satisfy a humble and rational 
hope that our season of probation is not lost, nor 
materially wasted. 

The sick-room is a sanctuary of confidence. 
It is a natural confessional, where the spontaneous 
revelations are perhaps as ample as any enforced 
disclosures from disciple to priest, and without 
any of the mischiefs of enforcement. We may be 
excluded from much observation of the outer life 
of men : but of the inner life, which originates 
and interprets the outer, it is scarcely possible 
that in any other circumstances we could have 
known so much. Into what depths of opinion 
are we not let down ! To what soaring heights of 
speculation are we not borne up ! What is there 
of joy or sorrow, of mystery and marvel, in human 
experience that is not communicated to us ! And 
all this not as if read in print, — not half-revealed, 
in the form of hints to such as can understand, — 
not in general terms, as addressed to the general, 
— but spoken fully and freely, with that particu- 



212 ESSAYS. 

larity which fastens words upon the soul for 
ever, — with those living tones of emotion which 
make the hearer a partner in all that is and has 
been felt. Here, we learn that the whole expe- 
rience of humanity may be contained in one 
bosom, through such participation as we ourselves 
entertain ; and even that all opinions, the most 
various and the most incompatible, may be depo- 
sited in one intellect, for gradual review, without 
inducing scepticism, and possibly to the strength- 
ening of the powers and privileges of Faith. 

Gothe, the seer of humanity, formed in himself 
the habit of agreeing with all the opinions uttered 
to him, alleging as his- ground that there is 
always a sense in which everything is true, and 
that it is a good to encourage, and an evil to 
discourage, any belief arrived at in natural course. 
There are men with minds of a far lower order, 
but still somewhat superior to the average, who 
do precisely the reverse, — they see far enough to 
be aware that there is always something to be 
said to the contrary of what they hear uttered ; 
and they cannot help saying it. They fall into a 
habit of invariable opposition, justifying the 
practice to themselves by the plea of impartiality, 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 21 

—of resistance to dogmatism, — of love of truth, 
and the like. I disapprove of both habits. Both 
practically injure belief, and damage the interests 
of truth. The natural operation of Gothe's method 
was to encourage in many indolence in the pursuit 
of truth and carelessness about opinions ;— in 
some, doubts of the very existence of truth ; and 
in all reflective persons, a keen sense of the insult 
conveyed, however unintentionally, by such treat- 
ment. Far worse, however, is the influence of 
the antagonist order of minds, — not only from their 
comparative numbers, for there is not a Gothe 
in five hundred years, — but from the direct opera- 
tion of their method and their example. A man 
who forms a habit of intellectual antagonism 
destroys more than can ever be repaired, both 
in his own mind and in those which he influences. 
He allows no rest in any supposition even to those 
who have not power or leisure to follow out the 
research. He cuts their own ground from under 
them, and does not establish them on any other, 
for he himself appears to be established on none. 
Men of this order are, above all others, fickle in 
their opinions. Complacently supposing them- 
selves impartial investigators into truth, they are, 



214 ESSAYS. 

in fact, the sport of any one who, discerning and 
playing with their weakness, can put them up to 
the assertion and defence of any opinions what- 
ever, and lead them into daily self-contradiction. 
What ensues is seen at a glance : — they tamper 
with truth till the structure of their own intellect 
becomes fatally impaired : — they denounce, as 
bigots, all men of every order of mind who remain 
steady in any opinions, and especially such as 
continue to hold opinions which they have them- 
selves quitted : — they never doubt of their own 
fluctuations being progression, and that they are 
leaving all stable believers behind : — they learn 
no caution in the publication of their so-called 
opinions from their own incessant changes, but 
rather pique themselves on their eagerness to 
exhibit and insist upon each new view, and enjoy 
the occasion it affords for complacent amazement 
at all who hold the positions which they have 
themselves abandoned. 

It may be said, that such men lose their influence, 
and with it their power for mischief. It is true 
that, by degrees, more and more decline argument 
with them, and they cease to have any convincing 
power, because it is seen that they themselves do 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 215 

not rest in permanent convictions ; but their dis- 
turbing power remains. They can destroy, though 
they cannot build up. They can unsettle minds 
which yet they cannot lead. They can distress 
and perplex the humble and narrowly-informed ; 
— they can startle, not only the slothful, (who will 
turn to sleep again, on the plea of the foible of the 
awakener) but the nervous and feeble who need 
repose ; and, worse than all, they can irreparably 
injure the young, by spreading before them wide 
fields of inquiry, and then hunting them out of 
every corner in which they would be disposed to 
stay, and rest, and think. Men of this kind of 
mind have a certain power of sympathy with 
every species of opinion ; and this good and 
attractive quality it is which mainly causes their 
self-deception, and aggravates their power of 
injury. They mistake it for candour, at the very 
moment that they overflow with intolerance 
towards holders of opinions which they have 
relinquished. The result in such cases is always 
the same, — intellectual ruin, throughout the de- 
partment of the understanding, however eminent 
the dialectical powers may appear, through the 
constant practice which has increased their original 



216 ESSAYS. 

strength ; and with the intellectual damage must 
be combined great moral injury. Gothe's method 
appears to be dangerous ; but the opposite one 
is fatal. 

To us, the depositories of vast confidences on 
these matters, it appears that there is no manner 
of necessity for either practice. We can avouch, 
from what we witness, that there may be sympa- 
thy with every order of understanding and every 
phase of opinion, without either hypocrisy, or 
tendency to disputation, or a surrender of differing 
views. We see how there may be an intrepid 
and continuous avowal of opinions, without dis- 
turbance to the unlearned and the feeble. We 
can fully agree with Gothe as to the unequalled 
mischief of endangering belief in that vast majority 
of minds which have other work to do than to 
investigate matters of opinion, without seeing it 
to be at all necessary to countenance what we 
know or believe to be error. We can fully agree 
with his practical antagonists as to the nobleness 
of candour, and the evils which ensue from 
dogmatism; while, at the same time, we would 
sooner die than dare to tempt one intellect to 
follow us, after one self-conviction of such an 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 217 

instability as theirs. Where there is a habit of 
mutability, there is intellectual infirmity, as is 
shown, with indescribable clearness, to us gazers 
into the mirror of events. It is a singular privilege 
granted to us, to witness the workings of the best 
method, — of that " simplicity and godly sincerity" 
which is unconsciously adopted by the wise to 
whom Truth is neither the spirit of rashness, nor 
" of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound 
mind." 

It has occurred to me, at times, that a second 
volume, — " On the Formation and Publication of 
Opinions," — less popularly useful perhaps than the 
existing one, but deeper and more comprehensive, 
might be an invaluable gift from the hands of some 
one in a retreat, (in a sick retreat, as illness invites 
confidence,) — from the hands of some one who 
would know how to use with equal discretion and 
intrepidity his singular opportunities. 

One of our most valuable discoveries is often 
made elsewhere, but is not sufficiently acknow- 
ledged and acted upon. We find, after a trial of 
many methods, that we learn to endure and 
achieve less by direct effort than by putting our- 
selves under influences favourable to the state of 



218 ESSAYS. 

mind we seek. We have discovered the same 
thing before, in regard to mending our faults. 
We have found that childhood and youth were 
the seasons of resolution, and that, perhaps, we 
have not since cured ourselves of a single fault by- 
direct effort. I am persuaded that instances are 
extremely rare of rectification by such means. I 
have myself amended only one bad habit — and 
that a very trifling one — by express effort, since I 
was twenty ; and I could point out only two or 
three, of all my acquaintance, that I know to be 
capable of self- improvement in that direct manner ; 
and I cannot but honour them in proportion to 
my sense of the difficulty and rarity of this exercise 
of moral power. Yet, how people go on expecting 
reformation in sinners from a mere conviction of 
the reason actuating the will, as they suppose, 
infallibly! the consequence of which foolish ex- 
pectation is, that the true appliances are neglected. 
Wordsworth has it — 

" ' Resolve !' the haughty moralist would say : 
< This single act is all that we demand.' 
Alas ! such wisdom bids a creature fly, 
Whose very sorrow is that Time hath shorn 
His natural wings !" 

Instead of losing time, and practically invoking 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 219 

despair, by exhorting to impossible flights, wise 
guardians will rather remove the sufferer into 
an element of new enterprise, or one which may 
gradually exhaust and destroy his parasitical foes 
of habit. We sufferers experimentally ascertain 
this very soon. We find how little reason we 
have to trust to efforts of resolution under circum- 
stances which tend to enfeeble resolution. We 
might be capable, as so many others are, of any 
amount of effort on a single emergency ; but when 
we have to deal with a permanent infliction — to 
make the best of a difficult mode of life — we find 
that we must put our trust in abiding influences, 
and not in a succession of efforts. We therefore 
lay aside defiance ; we submit ourselves — not to 
our troubles — but to every kind of natural pre- 
ventive, remedy, and solace. We arrange our 
personal habits so as to husband our ease, and to 
conceal ou£ pain ; and we place our minds under 
such influences, intellectual and spiritual, as may 
best nourish our higher powers, and occupy our 
energies, to the alleviation, if it may not be to the 
exclusion, of the suffering, whose challenge we 
will neither entertain nor defy. 

Among other merits of this method, may be 



220 ESSAYS. 

reckoned this — that it helps to introduce us to a 
privilege which may be disregarded by many, but 
which to us is inestimable — that of causing pleasure, 
rather than pain, to those connected with us. It 
is the prerogative of the healthy and happy to give 
pleasure wherever they go ; it is the worst humili- 
ation and grievance of the suffering, that they 
cause suffering. To the far-seeing invalid, who is 
aware not only of this immediate effect, but of its 
remote consequences, this is the most afflicting 
feature of his condition. If we can, by any 
management, evade this liability, we have cause to 
be grateful indeed. If, by submitting ourselves 
to all softening and ennobling influences, we can 
so nourish and educe the immortal part of our- 
selves as to subdue our own conflicts, and present 
our active and enjoying aspect to those who visit 
us, we are absolved from the worst penalties of 
our state. If, as years pass on, we find ourselves 
sought from the impulse of inclination, as well as 
from the stringency of duty — if we are permitted 
to see faces light up from ours, and hear the music 
of mirth succeed to the low serious tones of sym- 
pathetic greeting — we may let our hearts bound 
with the assurance that all is well with us. When 



GAINS AND PRIVILEGES. 221 

we cannot refuse to see that children come to us 
eagerly, and that our riper companions stay late 
by our sofa, and come again and again, till nothing 
short of duty calls them away, any one might envy 
us the feelings with which we lie down again in 
our solitude. We are not proud, like the young 
beauty with her conquest over hearts, or like the 
political or literary hero with his sway over the 
passions or the reason; but we are elate — and not 
without cause — elate in our privilege of annihi- 
lating the constraint and distaste inspired by our 
condition, and of finding ourselves restored to 
something like an equality of intercourse with the 
healthy in soul. The best and highest must ever 
be selected from among the healthy and the 
happy — from among those whose conditions of 
being are the most perfectly fulfilled ; but, without 
aspiring to their consummate privileges, we feel 
ourselves abundantly blessed in such a partial 
emancipation as permits us, on occasion, and 
without shame, to join their " glorious company/' 

THE END. 



LONDON : 
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHTTEFRIARS. 



April, 1844. 



ME. MOXON 

HAS RECENTLY PUBLISHED :- 



HAYDN'S DICTIONARY OF DATES, and 

UNIVERSAL REFERENCE, relating to all Ages and Nations ; 
comprehending every Remarkable Occurrence, Ancient and 
Modern— the Foundation, Laws, and Governments of Countries 
— their Progress in Civilisation, Industry, and Science — their 
Achievements in Arms ; the Political and Social Transactions 
of the British Empire— its Civil, Military, and Religious Institu- 
tions—the Origin and Advance of Human Arts and Inventions, 
with copious details of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The 
whole comprehending a body of information, Classical, Political, 
and Domestic, from the earliest accounts to the present time. 
A New Editton. In one volume, 8vo, price 18s. cloth. 



KNOWLES'S (JAMES) PRONOUNCING and 

EXPLANATORY DICTIONARY of the ENGLISH LAN- 
GUAGE. Founded on a correct development of the Nature, 
the Number, and the Various Properties of all its Simple and 
Compound Sounds, as combined into Syllables and Words. 
Fourth Edition. In royal 8vo, price 12s. cloth. 



By the Author of " Two Years Before the Mast." 

DANA'S SEAMAN'S MANUAL; containing a 

Treatise on Practical Seamanship, with Plates; a Dictionary 
of Sea Terms ; Customs and Usages of the Merchant Service ; 
Laws relating to the Practical Duties of Master and Mariners. 
Second Edition. Price 5s. cloth. 



HINTS ON HORSEMANSHIP, to a Nephew 

and Niece ; or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common 
Riding. By Colonel George Greenwood, late of the Second 
Life Guards. Price 2s. 6d. 



CICERO'S LIFE AND LETTERS. The Life 

by Dr. Middleton ; The Letters translated by Wm. Melmoth 
and Dr. Heberden. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait and 
Vignette, price 16s. cloth. 



^ 



v 



ADVERTISEMENTS. 



VI. 

KNOWLES'S DRAMATIC WORKS. In three 

volumes, post 8vo, price 21$. cloth. 

VII. 

CAPTAIN BASIL HALL'S FRAGMENTS of 

VOYAGES and TRAVELS. A New Edition. In one volume, 
8vo, price 12$. cloth. 



DEERBROOK. A Novel. By Harriet Mar- 

tineau. A New Edition. In one pocket volume, price 6s. cloth. 



THE HOUR AND THE MAN. A Historical 

Romance. By Harriet Martineau. A New Edition. In one 
pocket volume, price 6s. cloth. 



JARVES'S HISTORY OF THE SANDWICH 

ISLANDS; their Antiquities, Mythology, Legends, Discovery 
by Europeans in the Sixteenth Century, Re-discovery by Cook ; 
with their Civil, Religious, and Political History, from the 
earliest Traditionary Period to the Present Time. In one 
volume, price 6s. cloth. 



SHARPE'S EGYPT UNDER THE ROMANS. 

In 8vo, price 7s. boards. 



LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM: Essays. By 

An Invalid. Second Edition. Post 8vo. Price 8s. boards. 



LAMONT'S IMPRESSIONS, THOUGHTS, and 

SKETCHES, during Two Years in France and Switzerland. 
Foolscap 8vo. Price 6s. boards. 



JARVES'S SCENES and SCENERY in the 

SANDWICH ISLANDS, and a trip through Central America. 
Price 8s. cloth. 



Bradbury and Evans, Printers, Whitefriars, 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 899 090 3 



